3's Company
by wryter501
Summary: "From ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!" (Scottish prayer). A trio of stories featuring just such horrors - 2 modern a/u, 1 close canon - for Merlin and Arthur and company to face.
1. Ghouls and Ghosts 1

A/N: I wanted to try my hand at horror. Except I won't do slasher-stuff, I laugh myself silly in those movies, over the asinine decisions made that end up with everyone deserving to scream and bleed for their own stupidity, and the supernatural crap doesn't even make sense, and you just want it over with. Nor will I do the Stephen King stuff, where the rug is pulled out from under, just when you think the villain's finally got comeuppance, and the world is worse off than when the story started.

So I suppose this is… supernatural. Maybe semi-horror, with less-than-happy endings, depending on your imagination for what-comes-next.

A trio of unrelated stories – ghosts, monsters, and evil-black-mist-of-destiny. Two modern a/u's, high-schoolish without being about school at all, and one very close to canon…

Hope you enjoy, while I'm writing original material. I'm doing them in halves, so six chapters altogether, approx. one every five days, that'll get us through NaNoWriMo.

 _From ghoulies and ghosties  
And long-leggedy beasties  
And things that go bump in the night,  
Good Lord, deliver us!_

~ Scottish prayer

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

 **Ghouls and Ghosts**

Gwen wasn't supposed to be here.

Every scuff of her battered canvas shoes raised dust, rattled dead yellow grass, because there wasn't so much as a sidewalk. Not way the hell out here in the country where there weren't any cars on the street anyway, as the minutes ticked by. And any that came, would drive slowly past her on the opposite side of the street – because there wouldn't be any cars coming the other way, either, no white or yellow lines because why d'ya need 'em? – and wave.

Every breath drew in sticky heat, thunderous loud in the absolute stillness she didn't think she'd ever get used to. Far in the distance, she could maybe hear cows, a dog barking. Maybe a couple kids in a wading pool a couple of blocks down.

She was supposed to be half a state away from here. Home, in the _city_. Working at Sonic as a waitress-on-skates, bribing her brother to let her crash on the sofa in his apartment when she wasn't getting along with their parents. Getting ready for senior year at _her_ high school.

Gwen wasn't supposed to be here. If freakin' nowhere could be termed _here_. Farmville, USA. Blink and you miss it. Main Street actually called Main Street, and every block of it smelling like fertilizer.

 _Your grandma grew up here_ , her mother had reminded her, with a pleading sort of cheerfulness. _Give it a chance_.

The last house on the street was pink – no other word for it – and had a black-and-white cow penned in the yard. In the shade of the ditch opposite the pink house, she noticed a group of people from the corner of her eye – and that they'd noticed her first. And that they were probably her age, high school or just out of. One at least was smoking; one was a girl.

Gwen wasn't scared, and she wasn't shy. She _was_ feeling a bit grouchy about being here – then it occurred to her, maybe they were, too. She lifted her head and gave the group a direct look.

The girl was goth. Black lipstick, eyeliner, fingernails. Black skinny jeans, black shirt that clung to her from ears to knuckles in spite of the heat, thick metal jewelry. Hair long, unnaturally black, unnaturally straight. She called out, "Hey."

"Hey," Gwen responded. Not eager, but not belligerent.

"You new here?"

Obviously. But it was enough of an opening for Gwen to wander across the road that crumbled to gravel and then dust as it climbed a long-sloping hill out of town.

Three boys loitered with the girl. The one smoking was inches shorter and looked a bit younger than the others; a studded belt was the only thing that held his grubby jeans on his hips, and he wore his dark hair in a ponytail. The second had his head shaved, shins bare below ragged khaki shorts, feet bare in rubber sports sandals, and his torn muscle shirt showed plenty of muscle. The third was pretty for a boy, dark hair and eyes, plain maroon t-shirt and jeans. He stood sideways to Gwen, braced for the goth girl to lean against his body; he gave Gwen an up-and-down _hey-baby_ glance before whispering in the girl's ear.

She smirked but held Gwen's gaze. "Just moved in?"

"Yeah."

"What year are you?" The ponytailed boy casually exhaled his smoke around the question.

"Senior."

They all nodded, and for a moment no one said anything. Gwen felt awkward asking after names if they weren't offered, and wondered if she should surrender a neutral _see-you-around_ and retreat, but the girl spoke again.

"So what are you into?" Half-bored, because it wasn't really cool to betray interest. "Music, sports, drama, art…" She flicked black fingernails at her companions as she spoke, starting with the ponytailed younger boy, ending with herself. "What's your thing?"

Gwen blurted her answer without thinking. "Ghosts."

That shocked them, she could tell. But it was the truth – she'd watched movies and shows, but she'd read a lot more. Stuff on-screen was for show and reaction, to make the audience jump and gasp and cringe and hide their eyes – and then look anyway. Reality, she gathered, was much more… elusive.

"Really?" the girl said, and Gwen shrugged. "You ever see a live ghost?"

"Live ghost," the ponytailed boy scoffed. "Oxy _moron_." The girl reached out and shoved him without looking; he accepted the mild abuse without offense.

"Not yet," Gwen said.

She had thought, maybe, when they'd decided to move into the house her grandmother had inherited – unknown to them til Gran died and there it was in the will – but the only thing haunting the tiny split-level in the middle of town was the smell of age, and dry-rot.

"Then," the girl continued, glancing at each of the boys with a smirk, "we've got to show you the _Farmhouse_."

"Farmhouse," Gwen said. A large dose of skepticism was healthier than not, in her hobby.

"You're not doing anything right now, are you?" the girl continued, assuming. "It's just up the road." She pushed away from the boy, who caught her hand and she allowed it, sauntering toward the gravel-becoming-dust.

Gwen shrugged and followed at the girl's other side, the two other boys falling in behind – but in a companionable, not sinister way. They scuffed past the last house on the street, squinting into the gradual yellow hills beyond, treeless and therefore shade-less, wheat or weeds, she didn't know.

"What's with the farmhouse, then?" she asked.

"It's haunted," the ponytailed boy informed her cheerfully from behind.

"Triple homicide," the goth girl said, like it was the town's juiciest rumor. "Eighty years ago."

"Ninety," the boy with muscles corrected softly, his eyes on the ground and his long stride the slowest of them all.

"Whatever." The girl flipped her unnaturally-black hair over her shoulder.

"Double-homicide-suicide," the muscular boy added, and she huffed impatiently.

"Whatever, I said. You want to tell it?" She continued without waiting for his response, "So this farmer goes to kill his wife, and their landlord shows up at the door – so he goes to kill him, too –"

"No, the landlord heard screaming, and broke in," the ponytailed boy interrupted eagerly.

"Heard screaming from half a mile away in his own living room?" Muscles scoffed.

"No, when he came to the door. So he broke in and came up the stairs to stop the guy and they fought and fell down the stairs…"

The goth girl flipped her hair again, scornfully. "Right down to the cellar, where they fell into the toolbox and – boom, dead? Oh – there it is."

Gwen lifted her head to squint at the lone farmhouse at least three blocks – she still thought in city-distances, though there was barely dirt track here – away, and studied the farmhouse with every step they took. Two-story, though the slanted roof made her wonder what the upstairs was like. Full front porch, the roof half-collapsed. Split-rail fence, giving it a generous yard, relatively-small barn a stone's throw to the rear.

"So three people died here?" Gwen ventured.

"Maybe four," the girl said, as though delighting in the macabre, which she probably did. "The baby was never found."

And that was the part that brought tears stinging to Gwen's eyes. To cover that, she asked, "Have you guys ever seen a ghost, here?"

"No, but Arthur has," the ponytailed boy said carelessly. "His family owns the land-"

"His family owns all the land," the goth girl interjected sarcastically.

"He's like the great-great-grandson of the murdered landlord," the ponytailed boy added.

The girl's boyfriend spoke for the first time. "That doesn't even make sense."

"Great-grandson," Muscles corrected at the same time.

"What are they – supposed to come out at night?" Gwen said, half-sarcastic herself. "Flashing lights and rattling chains and moaning?"

"Just a story." The girl shrugged, tugging her boyfriend into a casual half-hug. "We have this – stupid game. You've got to climb in through a window –" Gwen could see that a sheet of plywood with a giant painted red X was nailed over the door – "and steal something."

"Steal something?" Gwen raised her eyebrows – _mockingly_ was cooler than _disapprovingly_.

"You can throw whatever it is back through the window again," the girl said.

And they all looked at her.

 _Oh, you've got to be kidding me_. She looked at each of them, back at the house.

"Of course if you're scared," the boyfriend said softly, down into the goth girl's hair, and she smirked – at the joke, not Gwen, but still.

New kid. Of course the others would test her. Dare her, even if the story was made up on the spot, even if there was no game and they were lying to see what she'd do. And it was stupid and juvenile, but still true – if she chickened out, the story would be all over by the first day of school in the fall and her year would be miserable. If she _did_ , they might talk about how gullible she was, to fall for it – but at least no one could deny her nerve and willingness.

"Fine," she said, pretending unconcern. _I've done this sort of thing a dozen times, at my old school_ bravado. She glanced down at herself – jeans and canvas shoes, hot but protective, sleeveless cotton shirt but nothing to worry about, climbing around in a dusty old condemned farmhouse. "Sure. How do I get in?"

"You're gonna do it?" the ponytailed boy said, both surprised and excited.

For answer, Gwen bent to duck through the two rails forming the fence – moments before the others - and they all continued scuffing closer. It seemed to her that she could feel the place as much as she looked at it. It was looking back, as if something sentient did in fact linger.

And her curiosity truly woke. What if it was true? For years she'd read and researched and daydreamed and _thrilled_ to think that someday she might sense the supernatural for herself…

The door and the windows on the lower level were boarded. The small octagonal window over the porch's roof had two crooked slats nailed across it, and a bit of torn faded material that was probably curtain, poked through broken glass.

Gwen stood at the bottom of the sagging trio of porch steps, and rubbed her bare arms up to the shoulder. She was getting a definite _Go away_ vibe. Which was kind of exciting, in itself.

"There's a ladder on the other side." The goth girl pointed. "And a stick you can prop the window open with."

She stared at the house as if formulating a plan of attack. Her heart pounded and her palms and mouth had become confused – one too dry, the others too wet – but there was more than a bit of anticipation, if she was honest.

Gwen had only done something like this once before. At a bonfire party in the suburbs, they'd all been drinking and laughing, and someone had mentioned this old shack back in the woods and someone else said it was haunted, and dares flew. And one of the boys had started walking out there, and she and a few others had followed, hollering advice and encouragement and abuse. And he'd hollered back for a while – until he didn't – and his silence had been deliciously scary. They'd called, and joked to each other, should we go after him… But when he finally came back, he was walking swiftly and straight, with his head sharply down. And Gwen had privately feared, what they'd see when he lifted his face, thinking of _possession_ – and he'd been right on them, and some starting to freak out, when he did look up. And grinned and laughed, like he'd played the joke on them. Although, she didn't know him well enough to decide for sure, what had happened that night.

But this was broad daylight.

She circled the house slowly, the other four still trailing her. Old-fashioned wooden siding, peeling paint, weeds grown up around the concrete foundation. She stumbled over a stone and realized it was the edging of a long-lost flowerbed. Someone had cared, and bothered, once. She glanced around the rear, and wasn't really surprised to see the canted door of an old-fashioned cellar entrance.

The sentience seemed to follow her on her circumnavigation, but it was hard to tell for sure, with her four companions. She found herself glancing up to the dormer window of the second floor.

Not barred to prevent so much as an inch of daylight, like the first floor.

And – maybe a glimmer of reflected sunlight. Or maybe the sleeve of someone's shirt or dress as they turned away from looking down on her. Or maybe, she read too many books.

But the books said, ghosts usually sought re-connection. Meaning. Understanding. The last step of this journey, the first step of the next. Someone to listen to them, before they could let go.

All she heard from this place was warning. Why not listen to that? Just retreat, leave it alone… but ghosts didn't belong. Good people went somewhere good, after death, and bad people went somewhere… they deserved. That was the way it worked, didn't it? No one was supposed to _stay_.

"That window?" she said needlessly.

There was a ladder lying in the forgotten flowerbed, wooden but missing no rungs. She hoped heavy meant sturdy. The muscular boy hand-walked the ladder upright, and the boyfriend steadied it; the ladder clunked against the siding.

"It's a bedroom or something," the goth girl said.

"And I'm not going to get arrested for trespassing?" Gwen said dryly, setting herself to climb. "And, if this thing falls apart and I break a leg, you're not going to leave me lying here?"

"I'll run for the sheriff in the donut shop," the ponytailed boy promised facetiously.

That was probably as good as she was going to get.

Gwen made her way up slowly, carefully testing each rung. Old and worn, but each held, and she reached the window without mishap. It had stuck a few inches open, a bit loose in its frame and slightly crooked as a result; there was a thick old piece of stick a bit longer than a ruler, lying in the sill.

She braced her elbows and pushed, gently but firmly, careful of the missing piece of broken glass, and the cracks in the rest of the pane. Curtains fluttered limply in the vague humid movement of the air; she could see plank flooring beneath the window, bare and dusty. Propping it open with the stick, she moved another rung higher, and leaned inside.

A bedroom, like the girl had said. Dusty brass spindles for head- and footboard, a knobby white blanket – dingy and stained - covered pillows and trailed fringe on the floor. A tall bureau stood in the far corner, and against the wall to Gwen's right, a dressing table with an old mirror – scratched and marred around the edges, cracked through and missing pieces. Pieces that were all over the floor. But nothing within reach that she could 'steal', and then heave through the window to return, after proving herself to the four others waiting on the ground.

Gwen watched the doorway – missing the door – feeling an instinct to call out, but not wanting to provoke ridicule from her new acquaintances. She squirmed awkwardly through the window and shuffle-crunched to find footing, hoping that the thin rubber soles of her shoes would hold up to the shards. Ghosts didn't actually lurk in odd places, according to the books she'd read, that was a Hollywood ploy. It wouldn't do any good to look under the bed or behind the bath-curtain – given there was a bath-curtain – unless the ghost was a child to play such tricks or hide from fear of her, or someone who'd died in the tub. Which wasn't the case, for this house.

No, the books claimed, spirits simply lingered, until they became aware of the presence of the living. Then, they might become visible, as if they absorbed some residual life from their living visitors, or a sense of self-awareness returned, sometimes strongly enough to retain their image, and sometimes even – the books hinted – to gain a semblance of tangible substance. Resulting in the strange sounds and unexplained movements people claimed to prove hauntings.

She rather thought it sounded like, the tree falling alone in the forest question. Was a ghost visible if there was no one there to see it.

But no one appeared. And the noise that made her jump was the rub of wood on wood, a long retreating sound.

Gwen whirled back to the window, as the muscular boy laid the ladder back into the overgrown flowerbed. Her throat closed, and she couldn't even give a protesting, _Hey_!

The girl was giggling, sauntering away. She shoved her hand in the back pocket of her boyfriend's jeans and he wiggled his fingers at Gwen in farewell. The muscular boy followed them without another look, but the ponytailed boy back-pedaled and cupped a hand around his mouth to shout back to her.

"There's a cellar door you can get out!" He gave her a double-thumbs-up for encouragement, then turned to catch up with his friends.

She heard their laughter rise on the stale motionless air, and sighed. At least her initiation-hazing-whatever hadn't involved kissing anyone or taking off clothes. This was, by comparison… this was…

Standing with her back to the wall by the window, she listening, breathing through her mouth, willing her body's physical responses to calm. To hear her unfriendly friends tell it, there were three possibilities. The murdered wife, the homicidal farmer, and the landlord who'd interrupted the deed, with fatal results. But it was far more likely she'd see nothing, and only freak herself out expecting it, jumping at everything.

Gwen glanced around the floor. Probably there was no real need for her to pilfer any small item to prove herself – those four had better have the decency to attest to her courage, after what they'd done – but she had no inclination to rush hysterically through the house to find that cellar door either. Most likely emerging out of breath and panicky, and the others would be waiting to laugh and label her for their classmates for the rest of the year. Ghost-girl is a scaredy-cat.

She had a streak of contrary stubbornness, she knew this. Today it meant she was going to stay. To explore, as long as she didn't actually freak out. To walk the talk.

So… Broken glass. Papers – pages from a book dog-eared in the corner, probably. Brush and comb – beads from several different necklaces, smashed and scattered. The dressing-stool, padded with fading, dusty red velvet, lay where it had been knocked on its side.

Gwen picked it up and pushed it into the knee-space of the table, knock-and-scrape loud in the stillness.

 _Movement_.

She glanced up into the mirror. There on one of the broken pieces, her own face.

And there just next, separated by a thin crack in the glass, a piece that reflected the corner of the room behind her.

A man turned from the bureau, young and too thin for his bones, shaggy dark hair combed in a style eighty years old – confident and calm, and oblivious to Gwen. Collared work-shirt half-unbuttoned to show an undershirt, and he was interrupted in unfastening his cuffs, by a young woman also apparently ignorant of Gwen's presence.

Dark hair in styled waves to her shoulders – again a popular look eight decades old – her dress collared and buttoned down the front to a belt at the narrowest part of a waist Gwen was mentally collected enough to envy. She wore a saucy smile that provoked a wide grin from him, and her eyes sparkled as she slipped the young man's suspenders off his shoulders in an uninhibited way that spoke of possessive intimacy and caught Gwen's heart in her throat.

He abandoned the cuffs to cradle her face in his hands and bend down to kiss her.

Gwen forgot herself, and turned.

No one there. Of course not. She glanced back at the mirror, but it showed only reflected dust and decay. She shivered – but more at the _idea_ , than any sense of malevolence or reason for fear – straightened, and moved to the doorway.

The room beyond was larger. The rest of the upstairs space, Gwen guessed, smaller square footage than the main floor because of the slope of the roof. Her eyes were drawn immediately to a crib on the far wall, white-painted wood and once-white bedding. A delicate rocking-chair was tipped and broken beside it, on the edge of a round braided rug on the floor, its colors obscured under dust and more broken glass.

A handful of toys that would pass no safety requirements, looking handmade. Carved wood and stuffed fabric. The high octagonal window on the wall to her left was surely the one over the porch and faced the stairway, across the length of the room.

That opening was noticeably darker than the rest of the room, and her only way out.

All was silent, in a way that soothed rather than heightening her nerves, and she lingered, suspecting that would change, when she went downstairs. Out of curiosity, she crossed to the crib, and tentatively risked a peek inside, hoping – no, it was empty. Sighing in relief, she looked around again, expecting a spirit to materialize.

Nothing yet.

She noticed that the papers on the floor, though leaves from a desiccated book, had been sketched over, some of them – all of them? She picked one up, feeling the grime of passed decades – a pencil drawing, and also decades old. Tilting it, she took three more steps toward the window, to see better.

It was recognizable as the young man she'd seen in the mirror-vision – ears and cheekbones, and if there was a grin on his face, it was directed downward to the bundle of cloth in the crook of his sketched elbow.

"I miss them," a voice whispered in her ear.

And even as she jumped and turned – though she saw nothing - a sudden and unnatural breeze whirled through the room, raising dust and fluttering pages, and ripping the one from her hand. It was possible that a gust had found the window Gwen had left open…

Except that all the pages flew helter-skelter to the braided rug, falling into a concentrated jumble in the returning stillness.

She grabbed her courage, and screwed it to the sticking point. Or something.

"My name is Gwen," she said into the air, "If someone is here, I'd like to talk. To listen. To… help."

Nothing.

… nothing.

To keep her eye on the whole room, as insurance against fright incurred by any sudden abnormalities, she moved along the wall, toward the bedroom door, toward the stairway opening. The attentive sentience was there, but it felt more like her brother looking over her shoulder to see what she was doing – annoying, but _safe_ \- than anything more oppressive.

Just shy of the bedroom, she found another page, stuck in a place where the floorboard didn't quite meet the trim at the bottom of the wall anymore. It was a rougher sketch than the other, which had been quite detailed – this one showed the skinny, bony farmer with his ears and his grin, hands in his pockets, standing behind a girl who was seated – juggling a baby too young to sit on his or her own, too young for obvious gender identification, in one elbow, and a large sketch pad propped on her opposite knee. She was giving the viewer – the mirror? – a lopsided, self-deprecating grin.

"Oh, I miss them."

This time, Gwen didn't look around. She kept her eyes on the page with an effort – they wanted to dart glances to the corners of the room – and said, "Who is this?"

Two words drifted to her, and she couldn't tell if it was aural or subconscious. _Husband. Daughter._

She was allowed to keep the paper. "You loved them," she said aloud, wondering like fury, what had happened to turn the gawky young farmer who smiled so brilliantly at his young family, homicidal.

Movement caught the edge of her vision, tugging her head around. Glimpse of the girl from the bedroom mirror, leaning lovingly over the front side of the crib at a baby hidden by the padding. Gone even before Gwen had focused – another flash turned her head further to see the girl standing under the window, looking up at it as if wishing to look _out_ of it.

And then she was gone. Surprisingly, Gwen felt calmer to know someone _was_ there. It was true, and as long as she kept a level head, she'd have an experience of her own worth telling, someday.

"I'm Gwen," she tried again. "Is this your house? I'm really sorry to intrude…"

Nothing happened, as she waited.

What else was she supposed to do? Leap from the window and actually break a leg? Turn her back and dash down the stairs, hoping to find that cellar door and escape before anything else happened? But then, how could she look anyone in the eye and claim, my thing is ghosts, if she left now? Maybe if the phenomena seemed to have stopped for good…

And, it would serve the goth girl and her three guy friends, to wait to laugh at Gwen – to wait and wait and then maybe start to worry as Gwen and her friends had worried for that boy in the dark woods last year…

Just to cover her bases, Gwen passed the open bedroom doorway, glancing inside – empty – and made for the stairway.

It was eerily dim. And, not a straight shot down, only six or seven steps until there was a landing, a turn to six or seven more steps down, but out of sight. The feeling overwhelmed her that something lurked there, just out of sight and then –

The breeze blew again, hard against her front like a physical shove, moving her a step back from the stairs.

"No! Don't go down there!"

She backed another step, turning to face the room, but the pages rustled back into stillness, and there was no sign of the girl.

Gwen breathed, and waited, and that was all.

But she really didn't have any desire to quit the comfortably-lit attic for the unknown darkness below. She tried, "Will you talk to me? Tell me about your husband and your daughter? What was her name?"

A whisper that came from nowhere. "Julia…"

She smiled involuntarily. "I like that name – my gran's name was Julie."

Another pause.

And then, Gwen wasn't alone.

The girl she'd glimpsed in the mirror, short-sleeved dress, collar and buttons and belt, sat on one hip on the edge of the rug, shoes over socks tucked beside her, curly head tipped as she looked down at the papers. Her free hand hovered as if she wanted to sort through them, but didn't quite dare.

And Gwen could see the bars of the crib, through her. The effect was fascinating, rather than disgusting; the ghost did not leap up and sweep shrieking toward her, did not demonstrate rapid decomposition as it gargled grotesquely. Gwen thought incongruously of a scene in one of the movies she'd watched, the little girl playing on the floor in a white dress and veil – the mother snatching it off to show the face of a wrinkled old woman – saying in a girlish voice, _I am your daughter_ …

But this girl only glanced up to meet Gwen's eyes, her expression the mix of surprise and welcome Gwen's own mother and grandmother might have shown to an unexpected visit from a new neighbor.

People really aren't as polite as they used to be, Gwen thought, marveling at the surreal.

The girl smiled – looked down at the drawings – then back up again, hopeful and expectant. She gestured to invite Gwen to join her… flickered… stayed.

Gwen ventured, one step at a time, to the opposite side of the rug. "What's your name?"

"I'm Freya."

The farmer's wife? They sure married young, back then. Gwen crossed her feet and sank to sitting carefully. The girl tipped her head to gaze at the topmost drawing on the stack with a fond-sad smile, and Gwen followed suit. "That's your husband?"

The girl mouthed a name Gwen didn't quite catch, but the smile didn't so much as waver.

Gwen thought, _wasn't he supposed to have killed you_? The books said, this was how it went. Discover the issue anchoring the spirit in the physical world – usually the circumstances of death – and resolve it, and the spirit will move on. But Gwen couldn't think of a tactful way to bring it up.

"And this is your daughter?" she said instead.

Talking to a spirit from eighty-ninety years ago. _I see dead people_ , she thought sarcastically, and wondered if she had actually tried to jump, and hit her head or something, and this was just a crazy coma-dream. But… so real.

"She was so sweet and dear – except in the middle of the night when she was hungry." Freya gave Gwen an ironic I-claim-to-mind-but-I-don't-really, look, and flickered again. "She's away with a neighbor. She was…" The spirit's voice and eyes drifted, her figure like mist coalescing and swirling behind glass. "Sleeping through the night. My neighbor offered to take her… so Merlin and I could be alone…"

"Merlin?" Gwen said, thinking of the landlord and why a husband might have reason to kill his wife – in a jealous rage?

Freya gestured. Gwen began picking up the pages, other sketches over the printed words. Many of the baby, but more of the young farmer – was that Merlin, then? her husband? The drawings were light and full of cheer and hope, and Gwen couldn't help smiling. The artist had been so obviously in love.

"Did you do these after –" she choked, awkwardly, and re-phrased, "Did you do these recently?"

"I miss him," Freya breathed vaguely, her gaze wandering the room. "It's lonely here… there's nothing to draw with, anymore..."

Gwen wanted to say, _what happened_. She wanted to say, _you know you're dead, right_? But she hesitated, not wanting to hurt Freya's feelings, any more than she wanted to disrupt whatever fragile mental balance the older girl maintained. She could not imagine living in what amounted to solitary confinement for eighty-ninety years, without knowing why. Theory was, spirits often needed a sensitive human – which Gwen evidently was, she wasn't sure yet how she felt about that, excited or afraid – to reveal reality, ground them with logic and compassion, so they could let go.

"What happened to him?" Gwen ventured. This was not a man she could see hurting his wife or daughter, but… It was also a risk, talking about him – she had the idea that naming and discussion could draw a spirit, especially one already in proximity.

"I don't know," Freya whispered to herself. "I don't know, I don't know…" Her eyes were fixed on the dark stairway, an agony of uncertainty.

"What's down there?" Gwen asked. "The rest of your house? Will you show me?" She did have to leave, eventually, and that cellar door was her only hope. But she thought, it wouldn't be half as freaky, pretending that Freya was a new neighbor giving her a tour of the place. Although, when it came to the question of leaving Freya stuck here alone… Well. Cross that bridge, and all that.

"I don't go down there," Freya told Gwen, hugging herself, a big-eyed waif in white. "I don't ever leave these rooms –" she looked around, fearful and trapped – "I don't ever see them. I don't ever see them – what happened?"

Gwen was not so sure she knew.

And then a board creaked. Behind her, near the stair.

Her mind jeered, _squeaky floorboard_ , _how cliché_ – but her body reacted with a startled flinch and rocketing pulse – and as she turned, she glimpsed abject horror on Freya's face.

And then she saw him.

Stocky. Dark suit. Sparse, short gray hair, heavy jowls, scar dividing his right eye socket and brow.

 _Transparent_.

The man crouched, reaching out one blunt-fingered hand in an attitude of inhuman greed, maniacal lust. The dark of the stairway stretched into the sunlit attic chamber behind him like an immense shadow that he dragged like Marley's chains, or that sucked to pull him back like a quagmire.

Freya screamed, without pause for breath, the sound instantly making everything ten times worse –

Gwen's heart stopped and she couldn't breathe, frozen in place though she was between them and he'd touch her first –

 _Flash_.

Light or dark, stunned retinas couldn't decide –

The skinny young farmer appeared behind the old man, body arched as his arms raised a ghostly ax over his head – eyes that weren't eyes but pure soul without need for the window – grim as an avenging angel, desperate as a dying bodyguard.

" _Merlin_!" Freya shrieked.

Neither male ghost had a chance to react to the word – the farmer brought the ax down on the old man with all the strength in his body, cleaving the other apparition in two obvious halves like a bloodless melon.

And they both vanished.

 **(PS, This is only part 1- second half of this story to be posted in a few days!)**


	2. Ghouls and Ghosts 2

**Ghouls and Ghosts** , part 2

 _The farmer brought the ax down on the old man with all the strength in his body, cleaving the other apparition in two obvious halves like a bloodless melon… and they both vanished._

The shadows slunk back to the stairwell, molasses tipped back into the jar.

"Oh my gosh," Gwen said faintly, and it was entirely inadequate. Her chest was too tight to allow for breath for speaking. _Omigosh, omigosh, who was that, what just happened, and I'm supposed to go down there, now?!_

Freya's spirit was upright, creeping toward the stairway she'd warned Gwen away from, earlier, staying to the side to peer down into dark obscurity. "Merlin?"

Nothing happened. Freya made a noise like a mournful whimper.

Gwen found the strength to scramble to her feet, leaving the papers on the rug. "Who was that other guy?" she demanded, even as her memory reminded, _landlord_.

Freya drifted toward her, clearly troubled – as if ghosts weren't already troubled spirits – reaching to touch Gwen's arm. She could swear she felt it, a cool brush against the fine hairs there, and she obeyed the gesture, following Freya to the large window at the far end of the room opposite the open stairway.

"His name is Uther," she said in a whisper.

The older girl leaned close as if telling Gwen a secret, but with her eyes locked on that dark chasm – the effect coaxed Gwen's sympathy without any natural resistance to the proximity of a ghost. She realized, Freya's figure was opaque now, if oddly faded of color.

"He owns our land – he has a wife and a son in his big house over the next hill, but he comes here and he talks to me when Merlin's out working on the farm and it's –"

Creepy. Stalker-ish.

"Did you ever tell Merlin?" Gwen asked, almost forgetting that these events actually occurred almost a century ago.

"No. Yes – I mean, I'd say, Uther stopped by. But Merlin, he's so trusting – and he couldn't say anything to our landlord anyway, and what was there to say?"

Gwen couldn't help thinking, _he's not so trusting anymore_ … She said deliberately, "So what happened?"

"It was our anniversary." Freya's voice dropped still further. She shrank back against the wall under the window, and Gwen felt the pressure of her arm through her sleeve, against her own bare skin. "A neighbor had Julia – she was sleeping through the night – so Merlin and I could have some time alone…" Her voice trailed off, but after a moment, she continued without prompting. "I didn't hear him come in. I turned around and he was _there_ … I screamed and I struggled, but…"

Gwen glanced inadvertently sideways at the broken, overturned rocking chair, the chaos of the rest of the room, buried under forgotten dust. The baby was never found, she remembered the goth girl saying. Perhaps the neighbor had just… kept the infant secret, after the tragedy and scandal. Yes, Gwen decided to believe that.

"He had his hands around my throat," Freya said, one pale hand lifting tremulously as if the trauma was recent. Yesterday. "I couldn't breathe, I couldn't fight – he was going to _take_ me. And then. I heard Merlin come in. He quit the fields early because… it was our anniversary. He called my name. He sounded so cheerful." Thin fingers covered the spirit's face, tears sparkled - and evaporated as they dripped.

"What happened next?" Gwen asked softly. "Did they fight?"

"I don't know," Freya said. "I don't know. I'm afraid to leave. I miss Merlin… _so_ much, but… I'm afraid of _him_."

So. Gwen could guess now at Freya's tether – and even at the reasons that kept the other two from the true afterlife. Freya's fear and uncertainty kept her in the attic room; the other two both wanted to reach her, and prevent the other from doing so.

Gwen didn't want to go downstairs either, but she guessed she'd have to. Only the goth girl and her three boy-friends knew where she was, and she didn't expect them to tell anyone. And, it bothered her to think of leaving these three here, things unchanged. Freya trapped for eternity alone, separated from her husband, who was locked in endless struggle with an undefeatable enemy.

But she couldn't help wondering if Uther's ghost would – okay, _attack_ sounded so low-budge-horror-flick, but it was what he'd done to Freya.

She'd read that spirits – _fed_ , again such a stupidly macabre term – off the energy of the living. Probably why Freya herself wasn't disappearing anymore, why she wasn't transparent, why Gwen could _feel_ her, now. But if that happened with Uther, also… Gwen shuddered. And hoped that the spirit of Freya's husband would act to save a stranger from Uther, however that worked. Willpower? It didn't seem like ghosts had much else left.

"Freya," she ventured, "you know… that happened to you, eighty years ago. It's been a long time… Uther killed you, and then…"

The older girl looked at her, bewildered – then around the room, as if seeing it for the first time in a long time. "I was waiting," she whispered. "Waiting for him to come for me…"

Gwen wondered, which _him_ she meant. Which time.

"Uther killed me," Freya said, as if verifying an unbelievable fact, and Gwen nodded. "And then… what happened when Merlin came in, and Uther went downstairs?"

Homicide. Suicide? Gwen thought of the ax, the disparity of status between landlord and renter – mutual homicide, retold to keep the older man's reputation?

"He can't come to me," Freya said. "Can he? Uther's keeping him away?"

That, or him keeping Uther away, was keeping him away.

"I wonder," Gwen said, "if we can get you out of here – downstairs – outside, maybe then, you can…" _Cross over_ , again with the cheap-movie terms. "Let go? and move on to – whatever comes next?"

"But Merlin," Freya said. "We just saw him, so he's… still here too, right? I can't leave without him."

"Maybe that's his reason for being here," Gwen ventured. "He thinks he can't leave without you… and Uther has you trapped up here…"

Freya shuddered, closing her eyes and turning away.

Gwen took a chance. Pushing away from the wall, she headed for the shadowy stair.

Quick as a blink, Freya was in front of her, hand out to stop her, but not quite touching. "What are you doing? You can't go down there!"

"I can't wait," Gwen said gently. "I need to go home tonight – my parents will worry – I need food, and water. And the only way I can get out, is the cellar door, unless I jump out the window."

Freya put her hand on Gwen's arm, cool brush of fingers that lingered. "Don't jump out the window," she advised, with nervous humor, then turned to the stairway without releasing Gwen's arm. Gwen looked down at her hand, ghost-white, but she couldn't see her own darker skin through Freya's not-really-there hand.

Was it her own perception that was changing? Belief affecting the sensation of reality? Did that mean it was possible for the spirits to hurt her? Possess her?

She reached with her other hand and took Freya's, linking their fingers, and eased down to the first step. Freya whimpered, clasping her free hand over her mouth to stifle the sound.

All else was still.

Gwen's feet made the boards of the stairs creak – she hugged the outer wall of the landing, hair curling tighter by the feel of her scalp, until she'd inched to the angle where she could see down the second half of the staircase –

Empty and silent. She gulped a sigh of relief, and tugged Freya with her, down one more step at a time.

Where were they, the other two? Gwen had a hold of their focus, by the hand. It occurred to her, if Uther's spirit leaped out at them, she could simply make a run for it and leave the three to – whatever outcome they could manage. Because, she had no idea how one fought back, living vs. the dead.

Freya's fingers trembled in hers, and she held on.

The stair opened into the front room behind the boarded porch. It was dim as deep twilight, not so much as a crack between boards over windows to let sunlight in. It smelled of mold and dust and dread; Gwen had the impression of chaos similar to the upstairs – furniture and whatever had sat on the pieces or rested inside drawers or cabinets, shattered and strewn.

Not a sound, other than Gwen's breathing, and heart pounding in her ears. Not a flicker of movement.

She took two more steps, to see into the room on the left. Kitchen, by the table and cabinets, half of which hung open and mostly emptied. One chair upright, one tipped, others smashed into kindling. Lots of glass and ruined crockery on the floor.

Freya made a small sound of distress – the first time she'd seen the destruction of her home – and composed herself to whisper, "There's another stair to the basement, through the kitchen."

Gwen moved forward, Freya followed shuffling, as though she watched behind them. Brittle shards crackled under Gwen's shoes – under Freya's shoes, in an unsettling echo. And sure enough, there to the left, another yawning black opening downward. Gwen wished fervently for a flashlight.

"What's the matter?" Freya breathed.

"Can you see in the dark?" Gwen hissed back. "I can't see anything." Ghosts were supposed to glow, weren't they? Freya was just a white blur in the dim, and Uther had worn a dark-colored suit.

Freya moved past her, letting go of her hand, to drift past the nearest set of cabinets. A drawer opened with a creak of protesting wood-on-wood, and Gwen was distracted from further proof of her spirit's _presence_ in the world, able to manipulate the _real_ , with the thought that the sound might prove a beacon for the other spirits. Her eyes ached with the need and inability to pierce the gloom.

Nothing happened.

Freya tried another drawer, creak-scrape – and her feet shuffled broken dishes. "Sorry!" she whispered.

Gwen forgave her when the next sound was an unmistakable scratch-sputter, and the soft glow of a candle lit the ruined kitchen. She tried not to think about the fact that an actual candle – short and fat – was being held aloft by someone whose actual body was dust in a grave somewhere else. Freya looked solid enough, if pale… and frightened. She tore her eyes from Gwen's to look down the stairs to the basement.

"Let's go," Gwen whispered. Her throat closed as she tried to swallow.

Freya held the candle out, and Gwen took it, trying to ignore the way the light glinted, reflecting from broken shards on the floor, imitating movement.

Three stairs down. Back door – glass knocked out, but the space was secured with another panel of plywood. Gwen wondered how well the nails held, after all these years, and whether it would be possible to kick or knock them out, and before the less-friendly spirit made itself known again. She thought about iron, and salt.

She turned the corner on the landing and –

This was terror. This was hell. Basements were creepy anyway, but this one was pitch black and alive, watching her with Uther's illogical lust, panting and salivating soundlessly.

The stairs were steep and narrow, so close to the other stairway overhead that she needed to duck. She imagined cobwebs – spiders – ghostly hands reaching…

She clamped down on hysteria. So far the spirits hadn't levitated, only moved as they were accustomed to in life. Uther was not floating on the ceiling to pluck at her hair – which rose from her scalp at the thought.

It was a single room, like the attic, but small. Work-counters and carpenter's shelves like she remembered from her grandfather's garage, odd nails in jam jars and paintbrushes in tin cans. A pegboard for hanging tools on – half of which were missing – strewn about the floor? - and the other half dulled with age and dust.

The mess was heartbreaking. And terrifying. If Freya could lift and hold and move a candle…

There was a rust-orange ax on the concrete floor, among other things. Not quite covering dark stains that she was afraid she could identify all too well, pooled and scuffed and dripped and splashed – the more she looked, the more she could see, so she tore her eyes away.

On the opposite wall, another door. Panes of glass at the very top, the one on the left smashed out into an obscure space behind. The cellar-steps that led to the slanted door? Gosh, if that pony-tailed boy lied to her…

Behind her, Freya must not have realized why Gwen had stopped. The older girl moved around her, then froze to see the chaos and decades-old blood-smear.

"Oh," she moaned, curling over as if in pain, one hand reaching but not quite covering her mouth. "Oh – _Merlin_."

Gwen fumbled the candle to the nearest shelf – it was fat enough to sit on its own – and dared to touch Freya's shoulders in an almost-hug that was solid enough, if cool. "I'm so sorry, sweetie," she said softly, trying to imagine such horror happening to her brother, and coming upon a scene like this, where he'd died. "I'm _so_ –"

 _Thump._

The single sound of something heavy dropping on floor or stair above them startled Gwen.

Thump….

Thump.

Again –

And again –

Until it was unmistakably…

… footsteps descending the stair.

Gwen was paralyzed with fright, not the least because she couldn't see what made the sound approaching. She backed one step, then two, as the footsteps reached the back-door landing. The darkness thickened until it was a palpable thing, choking the room, dwindling the candle.

Freya gave a little moan – and something on that landing gurgled a queer laugh, triumphant and satisfied and insane.

Thump... Thump. The spirit descended the last set of stairs, slowly – a predator sure of prey. Gwen saw his teeth first, gleaming and wet and ghostly, then his eyes – the right one interrupted by the scar.

"Mine," he rasped as he reached the bottom, gleefully certain.

Gwen managed another stiff step backwards, spreading her arms as if to gather Freya behind her, shepherd her to the _door_ –

Uther reached, and his meaty hand – white shirt-cuff, dark jacket sleeve – was opaque. Just like Freya, presenting more real and solid with passing time. He could make noise, he could _touch_.

His hands would be hard… they would be sweaty…

"So soft… so sweet… _mine_."

Demon eyes. Gwen was sick with fear and hoped her heart would explode sooner rather than later.

The cellar door behind them shrieked a protest of stressed wood swollen stuck in its frame, and Freya yelped. Gwen couldn't turn, but Uther screamed in fury at whatever he saw, and lunged.

Large hands, strong yet gentle, snatched her from behind. She was yanked tripping and scraping through the warped door-way – the bottom stuck only inches open, the top pulled forcibly back.

Uther's hand landed on her arm, cold as raw eggs, his clawing grip sliding away from her half-hysterical flailing for freedom, groping after her through the narrowing gap. Narrowing because someone leaned on the door to close it again from this side.

The candle beyond flickered wildly, dark and dim; Gwen heard Freya moaning from the steps beside and behind her. Merlin – as he grimly shoved the door to block Uther, spirit against spirit with a bit of wood between them – was faintly luminescent.

Uther squealed banshee rage. The door slammed into place – rebounded to show fingers slithering through – slammed again. In the space empty of broken glass at the top of the door, the older spirit's face contorted, wordless and open-mouthed frenzy.

Gwen whimpered helplessness and terror, half-falling onto the stairway behind her. Merlin turned to meet her eyes, pushing his shoulder against the door with all his wiry raw-boned strength.

He said calmly, "Go."

"Merlin," Freya pleaded, and Gwen suddenly felt she was the invisible one, between them. Or else going crazy.

"I'm right behind you, love," Merlin said to her, then his eyes bored again into Gwen's soul. "Go."

She did.

Freya was an indistinct shape in the faint candlelight through the gap in the door, through the broken window – but beyond her, thin lines of sunlight delineated the sloping cellar door.

Gwen tripped up the stairs she couldn't see, narrow and steep, barking her shins but not slowing. Forcing Freya up as well, til they reached the door at the same time. Her lungs were going to burst, she was going to faint – they shoved and the door creaked violently outward and to one side, blinding her with daylight. She didn't stop, pushing and dragging Freya with her, up the last steps, out onto the dirt of the yard, even crawling to get further away from the cellar door.

She fell on her elbows, twisting to look as Merlin leaped out – multiple steps at a time, hands spread to propel his body out of the dark throat of the cellar entrance. He whirled and bent, lifting the door and slamming it back down – and Gwen had been impressed with Freya holding the candle – holding it in place with his own body, bent spread-eagle.

Moving before she'd regained her feet or her balance, Freya scrambled to him and he leaned to follow her progress.

"Lock it," he told her as the door shuddered beneath him with the intensity of an indistinct bellow.

Freya used both hands, forcing rusted metal through rusted metal, turning the hinge back to secure the door like a large and simple buckle. For a moment more Merlin lay on the slanted door and she knelt above him and they stared into each other's faces.

Then Merlin let himself slide down to sitting on the ground, catching and cradling his wife as she threw herself into his arms to weep. He embraced her tightly – made a single sound half-gasp, half-sob – and met Gwen's eyes over Freya's tousled curls.

"Burn it," he said. Of his home, his hard work, his heart and soul, his family's safe place – his prison. His eyes, Gwen suddenly noticed, were blue. "Burn it. Please."

Gwen found herself nodding.

"There's fuel in the barn," he added. "Under the floor."

She kept nodding.

Merlin tucked his head down over Freya's, dark locks mingling – and they shimmered out of visibility.

 _Double-yu. Tee. Ef._

Gwen pushed herself up off the dirt and shakily brushed herself off.

"So that just happened," she said aloud, and managed a rather pathetic laugh.

Everything was quiet. She took a few steps and saw that the sun was still a couple of inches off the horizon – _how long have I been here?_ She squinted back the way she'd come, but there was no sign of the four other teenagers. What to do? She'd just agreed to burn a house down…

"Pretty sure there's laws against that, Merlin." But she stood still, and did not take off toward home.

Merlin and Freya were out, and free. Probably. And Uther still trapped – she looked back at the house and saw only the house – _probably_. And could she go home and live her life in this town knowing she hadn't kept her word? Knowing that other stupid kids might climb the ladder into the second-floor bedroom to claim a prize and…

She had the suspicion that she'd broken the status quo the three spirits had held for decades. Even if Merlin and Freya were free and gone, she couldn't say with any certainty if Uther was still confined to the house, or only to the downstairs… for all she knew, he was free to terrorize the town or possess anyone coming onto the property. And because of her, corporeal enough to knock doors down and grab folks' arms.

Gwen turned and headed determinedly for the barn.

The access door wasn't locked, but it stuck, and Gwen had to shove to open it far enough to slip inside. It was quiet, and smelled of engine oil and turpentine, old hay and very old manure-based fertilizer. There in one corner sat a very old piece of equipment; she only recognized the contoured shape of the metal seat, and wheels. There in another was a wooden hay wagon with rusted hubs, a stack of tin ash-pails.

Under the floor, but the floor was dirt – except for a series of planks in front of the big double doors. She scuffed at the edge of the one on the end. It shifted; not too heavy, then.

It suddenly occurred to her to wonder if Uther might not have the run of the property, at least, with Merlin gone. And might object to the burning of the house, especially if Merlin had recommended it as a way of precipitating the eternal punishment of the murderer's spirit. Sending him where he belonged.

No time to waste, then.

She bent and shuffled the boards back, finding an in-ground space like a mechanic's pit, and several rusty canisters that made her think of old-fashioned milk trucks. Sitting on the edge, she hopped down – it was only about five feet deep, as easy to get out of as a pool, maybe – and pried the lid from the mouth of one. Smelled enough like gasoline to her. Something flammable, anyway, and she could use one of those ash-buckets near the door. It might take several trips, and some time.

And some second thoughts. Arrest and prison and what would her parents say? A record to follow her all her adult life…

Careful not to splash on her clothes, she carried the first bucketful of gleaming oily liquid to the side of the farmhouse. Tipping it handle and base, she drizzled the accelerant – kind of excited, kind of freaked out, adrenalin-driven and reality could kick in later – over the lowest siding boards, and the ladder, around to the slanted cellar door.

She was prepared for another rattle-and-roar, as she did so; it didn't happen, but when a voice spoke, she nearly jumped from her skin and choked on her heart.

"What. The hell. Are you doing?"

Gwen spun, bucket swinging wildly, and almost lost her balance.

The speaker was a boy about her own age, dressed in jeans that had worn through at the knees, tennis shoes worn at the toes, and a plain t-shirt of a brown color that almost hid the dirt-smears. Almost hid the muscles, too – soccer player, she thought, not tall enough for basketball or beefy enough for football. His eyes were a light shade of blue, his blonde hair straight and long enough to flop carelessly over his forehead. He wore a half-smile; his tone was more surprised-amused than accusing.

"Nothing," she said immediately. And it was obviously a lie and she was annoyed with him for making her feel guilty. "It's none of your business, anyway."

"It kind of is." He stuck his hands in his pockets, glanced at the bucket and the house. "My family owns this property – and, technically, this house, so…"

She recognized that he was as embarrassed by the situation – catching someone in the act of _arson_ – as she was. She wasn't sorry for what she was doing – still believed it needed to be done, but… it all depended on him, now. "So what are you going to do?"

He shrugged, and reached to take the bucket from her. "No harm, no foul."

"All right," she said slowly, inching away while keeping an eye on him, not letting go of the bucket's handle. "I guess I'll… see you around?"

He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, but he was still smiling. "What are you, a juvenile-delinquent-pyromaniac? Now you're thinking, you'll just wait til I go home and set your fire anyway."

She cursed internally. Now, whenever the farmhouse burned – tonight, tomorrow, next week – he'd know it was her. So, how to persuade him not to get her in trouble?

"Look, I know you don't know me from Eve, but –"

"Sure I do. You're wearing clothes." The full smile flashed, and it was brilliant.

Omigosh. Was he seriously flirting, here and now? She shook her head to clear it.

"But I'm asking you to trust me. I'm not doing this out of some sick fascination with fire, or misguided attempt to make a statement by destroying some random abandoned building." His smile had faded with her intensity, but he was listening and she was grateful for that, at least. She gestured with the open palm of her free hand to the side of the house. "There is something evil in there, and I'm trying to put an end to it."

"I know there is," he said, his tone changed. He was as serious and sincere as she – which happened, _never_ , for teenage boys. "But there's something good in there, too, so… I can't let you do this." He tugged lightly at the tin bucket they still held together, but she didn't let go.

"What do you mean, you know?" she demanded. And then remembered, _Have you guys ever seen a ghost here? – No, but Arthur has. His family owns the land… owns all the land_. " _You're_ Arthur?"

"Yeah – and you?"

"I'm Gwen," she said, impatient. "So you've seen them?"

He gave her an odd look. "I've seen _him_."

"Which one?" she asked narrowly. If he was the great-grandson of the murderous spirit, would Uther appear to him? Lie to him? Enlist his help?

"Merlin," Arthur said.

She felt her eyebrows lift. "When? How?"

He shifted his weight, studying her – then evidently made his decision. "When I was little, I used to come play over here, sometimes when I wanted to get away from my family. If I wasn't getting along with my friends. Not inside, of course, just here in the yard. And once I looked up and he was standing there, watching me, with this… smile on his face.

"I said, who are you. And he squatted down beside me and said, I'm Merlin, who are you. I said, I'm Arthur, he said, what are you doing, and we talked for a while. Then he said, you shouldn't be here, you know. Yeah, I know, and isn't it dinnertime, you should be getting home. So I said, see you later, and he smiled. When I got to the fence –" Arthur pointed to the side of the yard opposite where Gwen and the other four had entered – "I looked back to wave. He was just going up the porch steps, watching me leave. He waved back, and – went _through_ the door."

Gwen understood the emphasis; the door was nailed over with plywood. "Did you know what he was, then?" she asked, fascinated. "Who he was?"

"You mean, a ghost?" Arthur grinned at her, and she realized, she liked him. Maybe even _liked_ him. "I don't… really… remember realizing that. It never… seemed to matter. To him, either."

"Did you see him after that?" she said.

Evidently Merlin's spirit, at least, had not been trapped inside the farmhouse. She wondered if he'd chosen, then, to stay. He hadn't seemed confused – the brief moments she'd interacted with him – by the situation, the same way Freya had been. And Uther, was probably just driven insane by his never-realized obsession.

"A couple of times, over the years. I'd get the feeling I was being watched, and look up to see him – never that close again, and we never had a conversation like the first one, really. I got the feeling he was keeping an eye on me… and I never believed the official version of what happened. Whatever he was, Merlin wasn't evil. I can't believe he killed his wife… that's why I can't let you burn this place. It's Merlin's home."

"He didn't," Gwen said. "He loved her. She was trapped here, too, but they're free now, and he told me to burn it."

"He told you?" Arthur said, incredulous. " _You_ saw him, then?"

"I saw them," Gwen corrected. "I was inside – _long_ story – Freya talked to me and…" She grimaced over the rest of the story, not so sure now that she would tell it to the public at large, Gwen's close-encounter campfire-ghost story, again and again, to be laughed at and disbelieved. "He helped us, get out through the cellar door."

Arthur looked at the house – at her – at the bucket. "Just now," he said slowly, "I was mulching my mom's rosebushes by our house. About three-quarters of a mile that way. I thought I heard someone say my name and I looked up, and there was Merlin. Out on the lawn, looking at me, before he… disappeared. And I've never seen him, that far from this place. I thought – well, when I got here and you were dumping gas everywhere, I thought he wanted me to stop you, and protect the house, but…" His expression changed, subtly. "You could've gotten their names from the papers. Archived online, and all."

"I've seen them," she offered. "I could tell you what they look –"

"No, there are photos in the papers, too."

Gwen said, "Their baby's name was Julia, and she was with a neighbor when it happened. Merlin didn't kill his wife." _This_ , was definitely a risk, but – "I think he killed your great-grandfather, trying to defend her. I think… they killed each other."

Arthur avoided her eyes by looking at the house. "I wondered," he said. "It never made sense to me, the way the papers said… And you know, he could've hated me for who I was, could've scared the crap out of me when I was little – probably could've haunted our house even a mile away from here. But he didn't."

"He stayed here for her," Gwen said. "And he made sure you were safe when you were here. I wouldn't hurt them, Arthur, I promise. They're free, and the only one left is…"

"Uther," he said, took a deep breath, and let it out. "I guess maybe Merlin wanted me here right now for another reason, then."

Gwen understood that, too. To say goodbye, to let Arthur know it was all right, and not to worry when the house went up in flames.

"Merlin told me where to find this gas," Gwen said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't even-"

"Where, then?" he said abruptly.

It went much faster, working with Arthur. He was stronger than her and less careful, and, he said cheerfully, it wasn't like his father was going to press charges, with him involved.

And he had a lighter. He didn't even ask her, which one of them should be the one to do it. When she turned from emptying the last pail-full over the red X on the front-door plywood, it was in his hand. He thumbed the spark wheel thoughtfully, as she came off the porch and joined him, setting the bucket aside.

"You smoke?" she said lightly.

"Once in a while," he said absently. "Maybe it's time to quit." Then he flicked the rough-metal wheel of the lighter with intent, held the tiny flame a moment.

It seemed to Gwen that the house inhaled the fumes of the fuel. And when Arthur tossed the lighter to the base of the foundation and the flames lapped the liquid, rising with exponential and even explosive speed – both directions, to meet on the opposite side, in the space of two breaths reaching the second floor – the crackle and roar of the fire seemed to contain the rage-shriek of a condemned soul.

Arthur took hold of her bare arm, drew her back from the heat as _fire_ matured into _inferno_.

The inhuman scream increased – then cut off as if breath was gone.

It didn't come again.

"You think that's it?" Gwen heaved a sigh of relief, that was copied a second later by Arthur, unconsciously.

"Yeah." He added, "I'll walk home with you. We shouldn't be here if someone sees smoke and calls the fire department. That way I can put off facing my dad for another hour, too."

She glanced at him to see a sardonic half-smile on his face as he watched the old farmhouse burn – then it dropped so suddenly she turned to see what he was looking at.

Two dark figures silhouetted against the red-orange flame. Almost as she'd seen them last, one bent over to cradle the other in his lap on the ground, the second clinging arms-around-neck to the first. And he stood, carrying his bride in his arms, their heads tucked close together. Three paces away, their identity – which she hadn't doubted – was obvious.

Arthur stepped back from Gwen as Merlin moved between them and paused. Merlin swung to the side and dipped his head to bring his mouth close to Gwen's ear.

"Thank you," he murmured.

Gwen shivered, but nodded.

Freya freed one hand to cup Arthur's cheek – almost, and he only pulled back a surprised inch – in a gesture that was pure forgiveness.

Then Merlin turned to face Arthur with a smile. "Take care of yours," he said only.

Arthur responded with an emotionally-hoarse, "I will."

Her husband's movement had brought Gwen face-to-face with Freya again. "I won't forget you," Gwen promised, feeling a good bit of that emotion, herself. "Say – say hello to my grandma Julie, she's what brought me here."

Freya's smile was beautiful. "I will."

Merlin shifted Freya's weight in his arms exactly as if he needed to, and strode away from them. Arthur moved back to Gwen's side, and she wasn't particularly surprised – or unnerved – when she found her hand in his. She squeezed back, needing the tactile comfort of another living person.

Ahead of them, Merlin reached the fence. Gwen drew in breath, wondering if they'd pass straight through, or vanish when they crossed the boundary of what had been their home.

Merlin didn't hesitate. Bending slightly as Freya curled tighter into him, he leaped to the top of the fence, light and strong –

And a pair of wings – more eagle than angel – unfurled from his shoulders, luminous white in the dusty dusk like he was a flame himself, a reflection of the setting sun. Details of both figures blurred, and a single down-stroke was enough to set them shooting upward –

And they faded, first star in the sunless sky.

"Heaven and hell," Arthur said, slightly incredulous. "I can't believe that just happened. I'm… I'm going to miss… them."

"You and me both." Gwen's chuckle was unsteady, and she was glad for Arthur's hand grounding her in reality.

He turned to face her, and didn't drop it. "You're new in town," he said, and it wasn't really a question. "I have to warn you, most days are _not_ as exciting as this."

The smile felt easy and natural as breathing, as if she'd found where she belonged, for the first time. "I guess we'll see."

 _The End_


	3. Long-Legged Beasts 1

**Long-Legged Beasts**

Of course it was Merlin who was late.

The engine of the white full-size van parked in front of the campus student union building was running, the driver in his seat, face obscured by a black ball-cap with the college mascot on it as he messed with his phone. Merlin's heart pounded like a trip-hammer from his burdened rush from the dorms across campus, and a bit of trepidation; he assumed from first glance that everyone else was already inside and waiting.

Ah - except Gwen.

Gwen was the friendliest front-desk-attendant in the co-ed dorm; she had several of the afternoon-hour shifts on days and at times he came back from class or work. Talkative and friendly and pleased as punch to extract the information that he'd chosen to begin learning French for his foreign-language requirement. She'd lit up like a Christmas tree on her high stool behind the lobby's front office-counter where he leaned habitually companionable, and slipped off a whole line of the language, before translating herself.

"Three years already I've been taking it. I've thought about moving to France for a while to teach English – if my English was any good –" infectious laughter that always made Merlin smile – "and depending, of course, on Arthur…"

He recognized her beside the van with relief – his one friend away from his hometown was the only reason he'd agreed to come on this trip. Five hours on the road to watch a play – in French – overnight at some cheap bed-and-breakfast, five hours back to school tomorrow. The last weekend in October gone, and two days docked from his paycheck for the absence. But it was going to be worthwhile, with Gwen to help with the translation and spend time with, generally.

"Ah, Merlin!" Gwen said, beaming as she turned to him, the collar of her jean jacket just brushing the bottom edge of her short-cut curls. " _Tres bien! J'espère que vous viendriez avec nous_!"

Merlin took his best guess. "Well, I said I'd come if I could find a replacement for my hours at…" His pleasure to see her dropped way off as he rounded the front right bumper of the van to see that she was not loitering outside the open sliding door by herself.

A pair of large white hands had not released her jean-clad hips when she turned – and Merlin came the rest of the way around the idling engine to the familiar sneer of the golden boy. Arthur, who always asked for extra food from Merlin who worked the kitchen side of the cafeteria line. And mocked the requisite apron as girly, and left wasted food on the tray he didn't take to the conveyor belt to the dish-room, but left on the table for servers like Merlin to pick up after him. And probably didn't treat Gwen half as well as she deserved.

Arthur gave him a contemptuous up and down glance and purred out a whole conversation with his girlfriend in throaty, sexy French – too fast for Merlin to catch more than a phrase or two.

But he could guess.

Because Gwen slapped Arthur's chest playfully and said to him, "I asked Merlin to come. He paid for a ticket, he has every right."

" _Français Une n'est pas Club Français_ ," Arthur said distinctly. " _Allons-y_." He turned to assist her climb into the van.

Evidently they'd claimed the first and shortened bench row, leaving Merlin to hunch himself past their space along with his overnight backpack. He turned awkwardly to slam the sliding door behind him and shuffled himself to the next bench seat, nearly buried with extra luggage, since the last row in the back was already occupied by three students Merlin knew were actually French. Transfers. Probably friendly enough, but he was years younger and had trouble pronouncing _Je parle le f_ _rançais_ _un peu_ , properly. He tucked himself into the corner behind Arthur, squirming to reach the seatbelt to its latch under the bags of the others.

As the van shuddered into gear and began to roll from the parking lot of the student union, Merlin leaned forward diagonally to get Gwen's attention.

"I thought Madame Noircir was coming with us?"

" _En f_ _rançais_ _, s'il vous plait_ ," Arthur said mockingly over his shoulder. " _Il pense, il pense, il peut penser surprenant_."

That, Merlin understood. Probably Arthur intended him to understand the insults.

"She went ahead," Gwen explained, ignoring her boyfriend. "She'll meet us at the theater tonight. She'll be excited to see you came – she's been encouraging her classes to involve some of the beginners that we know, in the club." Her sweet smile took any sting from the words, and he _was_ a beginner, after all.

Merlin settled back.

The French girl, jagged-cut purple hair under her beret and a nose-ring, murmured something about _l'Anglais_ to her two male companions, pale with lank dark hair and – it seemed to Merlin – perpetual sneers.

The actual French. And the graduate-level French – who were also nearly-engaged seriously-dating. And Merlin the _je le parle un peu_ in the middle. Working the cafeteria line to pay room and board and hauling homework along with clean shirt and shorts and socks and toothbrush, so that the struggle to maintain GPA and keep his own scholarship wasn't lost.

"How far from the city?" he heard Arthur say, in a tone of dissatisfaction.

"Not very, she said," Gwen answered. "I looked it up online – I guess it's something of a tourist attraction, it's supposed to be haunted or cursed or something…"

Arthur wasn't interested in hearing about their accomodations for the upcoming night; he tucked Gwen's curly black head into the crook of his neck and murmured something too low for Merlin to hear, but probably containing some play on the words _bed-and-breakfast_. She giggled, and Merlin wasn't interested in observing _that_.

Unzipping his bag, he took out his homemade flashcards for his History of the English Language class, to pass the next six hours studying the symbols of Old English for the midterm.

When they reached the city and navigated the unfamiliar streets and arrived finally at the theater, Madame Noircir was waiting for them impatiently. She was a tough, tiny woman from the Côte d'Ivoire, black as night with just a sprinkle of tight curls over her scalp and hoop earrings that brushed her shoulders. She taught the more advanced classes; he only knew her by sight and because the way she looked at him in the hallway of the languages building made him self-conscious about trying to learn her language.

" _Vous_ _êtes_ _en retard_ ," she told them, nodding and gesturing some private message to the driver. " _Allons-y_."

The only light in the theater – high balcony seats and long sloping main floor – rain the aisles at the base of the seats. Curtains closed and instrumental music played through speakers; still Merlin had the uncomfortable impression of most of the audience turning to look at them as they passed. He found himself the odd man out at the end of the row, between Gwen – who leaned over the opposite arm of her seat to hold Arthur's hand and snuggle her shoulder to his – and Madame Noircir.

The curtain went up on a home-office scene, desk-bookshelf-couch, an old man and a younger woman who might have been an employee. It was soon obvious that the play – billed as a satire – was light on action and heavy on dialogue. Merlin quickly gave himself a headache trying to follow it, and by the second act was content to congratulate himself when he recognized stray words here and there.

It was possible, he allowed, that his headache was partially due to whatever scent Madame Noircir wore. It wasn't like any perfume he'd ever smelled before, and he'd hesitate even to call it that, it was so dark and earthy. Something not unlike burnt cannabis, even. It seemed to get stronger as the play wore on, rather than otherwise.

A couple of times he glanced over at her – gleam of eyes and teeth in the dark of the theater, watching him in amused delight. She probably expected that he was catching all the sarcasm and innuendo.

By the time the curtain dropped the final time, his head was pounding and he had to put a hand on the backs of the aisle seats that he passed, to keep from staggering dizzily and possibly crashing into several other people trying to shuffle their slow way from the crowded theater. Madame Noircir kept close to him and he couldn't figure – through the weary fog of his brain, and the embarrassment – whether he appreciated that, or not. He heard the others behind him, laughing and discussing the play, probably in French, though their instructor at his elbow was silent – and maybe even watchful of him.

Light and shadow swam together in the parking lot, and he was glad to crawl to his middle-bench window seat and lean his face against the cool glass, sensing the moving light-and-shadow continue against the backs of his eyes as they drove out of the city.

 _Just need to sleep, probably. Feel better in the morning._

He was relieved that no one else seemed to notice his malaise; no one asked, annoyingly sympathetic, if he was all right, to draw the attention of everyone else. The scent of whatever clung about Madame Noircir seemed to Merlin to intensify in the smaller space, though no one else alluded to it, as far as he could tell. He turned his nose to the window, illogically seeking cool fresh air through the glass.

Out of the city, as their itinerary had detailed, to a farmhouse renovated into a B&B where they'd have rooms for the night. For a moment he tried to remember what Gwen had been saying about it on the trip there, but… no, it was gone.

And when the tires left the road – and the gravel shoulder –

for the _air_ –

for a moment, he thought the floating sensation was just his head.

Because there was no screaming. Just the first over-and-down hill of a roller-coaster – One helluva _CRUNCH!_ and a terrific jerk downward. Which was now toward the front passenger side.

A cacophony of silence. Shattered glass sprinkled down on his face like rain.

He groped for his backpack and couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel his safety belt still holding him in place, bruises on his knees from the seat-back in front of him. He opened his mouth to call to the others and didn't have the breath to make his voice sound.

To the side… and above him… stars glittered in the dark blue of the sky.

He reached clumsy with both hands, pulled himself out the empty space of the side window.

Wind roared a gentle gale through his ears. All was dark but the stars and moonlight illuminating each edge of rock and grass rising above him.

Bruising his fingers, he dragged himself free of the vehicle onto the steep slope, and flopped dizzily to his back.

Was the engine still running? He couldn't sense anyone else moving at all. Couldn't see a damn thing. Tried to call and still couldn't hear his own voice around his thundering heartbeat – had his ears been damaged in the crash? so close to the broken window…

Climb down and pull people out, drag them back – up to the road? Didn't they say, don't move people after an accident? What made him think he had the strength?

Go for help.

Merlin clawed his way toward the starlight. He felt the land begin to level out, crawling horizontal instead of vertical – he could see the road before him with its yellow-and-white painted lines, the gravel of the shoulder, faint in the moonlight.

Wheeling unsteadily about, he could not make out the van, not white paint nor tail-lights. It might have been swallowed whole by the ravine.

He didn't know where he was. Out of the city, into the countryside – how close to their destination? – the phone he used but seldom, the minutes paid for as they were used by his mother, still in his backpack, lost somewhere in the van's interior.

"Hello!" His voice echoed oddly in his head; his tongue felt thick. Desperation swelled in his chest, rising to choke his throat. Nothing _hurt_ on him, though he felt absolutely pulped.

No one answered. Not a sound.

"Can anyone hear me?" he tried again.

Responsibility was overwhelming. Sole survivor. _If you don't… no one will_. No one to call for help.

If he climbed back down, he still could do nothing. But, oh… _Gwen_.

Words and symbols bloomed into his consciousness like lemon juice on paper held to candle flame. The Old Language… the Old Country. Deepest darkest secrets, stirring in his soul like something important, forgotten…

Merlin drew himself up, raised his hand in front of him. Hesitated at the stupid stupid mental picture of Luke Skywalker, his X-wing sunk in Dagobah's swamp.

 _It isn't real. Yes it is…_

He might've spoken the command he felt, or he might have merely willed it. Snatches of childhood. In solitude, believing – whispering and gesturing and believing _if I can just get this right it will_ happen _–_

Something clicked into place – or out of place – suddenly and violently and his hand was a fist to hold more control. He pulled – and _pulled_ – he could raise the van from the ravine and then there would be time and light and access to check and save the others –

 _It isn't impossible I won't fail –_

Merlin pulled at the darkness, feeling it give, grappling tenaciously at the ether surrounding the crumpled metal and helpless bodies – til he stumbled back onto his butt and shuddered in the night air crawling over sweaty skin.

A jarring thud. Cleared some sense, maybe.

Really? Trying to use _magic_ to lift a van? While people need actual help?

In scrambling to his feet, Merlin turned to his knees first – and glimpsed a solitary light in the vast blue-black-gray-pinprick white of the world.

Yellow. Electricity. Window?

"Hey!" he shouted down into the ravine. "If anyone can hear me, I'm going for help, just hold on!"

No answer. He wasn't surprised – but horribly chilled with apprehension.

Down from the road, through grass that felt long and damp. Over a fence – wood post and wire and he was lucky there were no barbs – across the spongy uneven furrows of a field he couldn't see properly but vaguely believed to be past harvest.

Stumbling on. Making his legs keep working, like pistons, against the resistance of lethargy.

The light grew, and squared. Window, then – and gleam of white paint. Farmhouse with a deep shadowy porch, the chain of a swing and a great pot of flowers that wafted a falling-leaf scent though he couldn't see them in the night. Barn shape off to the side and he recognized the whole – hoped he recognized it – from the thumbnail picture in their field-trip paperwork.

Bed-and-breakfast. Somebody still up, waiting for the arrival of the college French club, somebody who already knew their details –

He tripped on the porch stair, staggered to the door. Rattled the screen ineffectually – pried it open only for it to slam spring-loaded back on his shoulder. Old-fashioned knocker, tiny and quaint. He tapped it insistently – couldn't make it louder – abandoned it to thump with his fist.

His legs were jelly and his skull felt cracked.

"Come on, come on…"

No answer. No one came.

"Come _on_!" he sobbed – and let the screen bang, stumbling off the porch, around to the side where he'd seen the light in the window.

It was open. Bottom sill chest-high, and the screen loose in one corner. He ripped it off the house – ripped a fingernail too by the feel – jumped and squirmed his way inside. At least he could find a phone…

It was one of the bedrooms, illuminated by a fat painted lamp with a cylindrical shade, on a table at the head of the bed. Patchwork quilt tucked over the pillows. Braided rag rug on old polished hardwood floor.

He stumbled across the room to the door – fumbled with the old brass knob, loose in its setting – finally yanked it open and –

Came to a bewildered stop.

A great two-step-down sunken living room, three fat-stuffed sofas facing a flat-screen next to a rough-brick real-fire hearth and exposed chimney. TV on, flickering the bright images and beautiful people of some rom-com.

On the sofa with their backs to him, the purple- and-black-haired French.

On the sofa facing the TV, she with her feet tucked up and he with his arm around her - Gwen and Arthur.

In the shadows across the room, Madame Noircir and another unknown woman, heavy in bust and hips, short straight hair showing gray. They looked up at him simultaneously, without expression, eyes gleaming in flickering firelight.

Gwen twirled a curl around her finger absently; the purple-haired French girl leaned to murmur a snide comment to the boy on her right, their attention wholly on the television. The boy snickered.

Merlin's feet lurched him down the two steps, to the back of the couch where Gwen and Arthur sat. His brain wanted to remember the names of the actor and actress on the screen, making out on the dock at sunrise – sunset? – wanted to read the subtitles showing in white-block French.

But his mouth blurted, " _What the hell is going on_?"

Gwen looked up at him, smiling her own sweet, pure friendship through a slight frown for the oddity of his question, in that setting. "Oh, Merlin – aren't you feeling any better?"

Better than what? He felt cold, and battered, weak from exertion and – upside down.

"What – happened?" he managed.

She scooted to face him more fully over Arthur's shoulder. "You don't remember? You weren't feeling well after the play, you fell asleep in the van and when we got here, you went right to bed." She pointed to the room he'd just emerged from. "Do you feel better now?"

"There was an accident," he said out loud. And then Arthur shifted to give him a glance. He met the older boy's blue eyes, careless now of the habitual mockery. "The van… we were all in it…"

"Did you have a bad dream?" Gwen said, concerned and moving to the edge of the couch, still turned to face him over the back.

Arthur glanced at the TV – wasn't interested in the rom-com anyway – looked back at Merlin. Didn't crack a grin, didn't say anything.

Merlin said loudly, insistently, "It wasn't a –" peripherally he caught the hint of Madame Noircir and the stranger rising as one, watching him, and he flinched without quite knowing why – "dream."

The two women stepped down into the room, and Gwen rose from the couch, looking toward Madame Noircir as if for help. Did he sound crazy? Disturbed, at least. He couldn't shake the feeling that _SOMETHING_ had happened out there in the darkness, something he was responsible to take care of, something dangerously hazy.

"If you are feeling disoriented," Madame Noircir said in her odd clip-slur accent, "perhaps you should lie down once again."

"No," he said immediately, retreating from the intensity in her eyes and her companion's. Did no one else see that? That wasn't normal.

"I can make you a cup of tea," the gray-haired woman offered.

"No!" Merlin nearly shouted.

One of the French students hissed in irritation at the disruption he was causing. Arthur was turned sideways on the couch, looking up at the rest of them as if trying to figure out what was going on, and what he should do about it.

"Come on," Gwen said to Merlin, rounding the couch and the two older women – pausing to brush the stranger's shoulder and say, "Tea would be good, thanks."

Then, as they stopped moving, she continued to follow Merlin's retreat, shepherding him back toward the bedroom. She didn't say anything further, but Merlin obeyed her intention and backed into the bedroom again, nearly tripping when his heel caught on the threshold. Gwen swung the door almost closed and faced him with a distinctly worried wrinkle over her usual calm expression and he felt instantly ten times _safer_. Her in here with him, them out there.

"There was an accident," he repeated obstinately, knowing and trusting that she would take him seriously. "I didn't dream it." _Did I dream it?_ "I remember it."

"What else do you remember?" Gwen said. "Start at the beginning."

"The play," he said. "There was this strange scent – I was sitting next to Madame Noircir and there was this smell, and I had a headache. I was dizzy coming out of the theater, and in the van and – suddenly we were airborne and crunched down in a ravine or something off the road. I couldn't see or hear any of you – I couldn't reach my pack –" He broke off to look around the room; she did the same, but it wasn't there.

"Merlin, we're all fine," she said slowly, frowning a little because she cared, and it mattered to her that he was upset. "You can see that, can't you? We weren't in an accident."

 **A/N: As before, this is only part 1 of this story…**


	4. Long-Legged Beasts 2

**Long-Legged Beasts** , part 2

 _"Merlin, we're all fine," she said slowly, "We weren't in an accident."_

The door opened, nudging Gwen a step forward, and Arthur entered with a thick cream-colored mug in one hand, steam wafting gently. "They sent me to bring this," he said, abruptly and awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable.

Merlin didn't take it. "Look, the bed hasn't even been laid on."

"You could have straightened it before you came out," Gwen said gently.

"My jeans and shoes are all damp and muddy from walking through the fields – I saw the light in the window and came for help -"

"Is he still on about that dream?" Arthur said to Gwen.

"It wasn't a dream!" Merlin exclaimed, feeling a bit desperate.

Gwen told him, carefully pragmatic, "You could have stepped in a puddle in the yard."

"Yes, but – wouldn't this cover be all wet and muddy, then," Merlin said, turning to the bed and running a hand along the foot of it. "And – I knocked off the screen getting in the window, see?"

Arthur thrust the mug into Merlin's hands, crossing to examine the window. "Hope they're not going to make us pay for that," he muttered.

"You could have done that, too, before you came out," Gwen said, tentatively sympathetic. "I'm sorry, Merlin, but –"

He collapsed onto the bed, hot tea slopping gently as he bounced, steam rising aromatically.

Arthur said to Gwen, "Does he _take_ anything? Maybe he's just –"

"No, he's not like that," Gwen answered – and their voices faded in Merlin's ears.

As the steam rose aromatically.

He inhaled pungent herbs and thought of Madame Noircir's perfume - thought hazily he should probably fling the cup away to splatter and shatter – _huh, that rhymed_. But his hands remained motionless and the steam curled up his nose… down his throat… into his lungs… around his bloodstream… into his brain.

And one thing he knew, beyond a doubt. Whether his body had ridden in a van intact, whether it had stepped in a puddle or lain in a bed – he had been at that ravine. He'd attempted something – had done something –

 _MAGIC_

unusual, secret, powerful, scary – something.

What?

"I'm going back out there," he said, and the abrupt decision allowed him to surrender the cup to gravity and set it on the polished hardwood flooring. "I'm going to go back, and check."

Gwen looked at Arthur – who looked back blankly, before huffing an irritated protest at her wordless request, hands on hips as shoulders slumped resistance.

"We can't just leave him alone, it wouldn't be right," she said.

"Call Madame Noircir and tell her what happened and let her deal with it," Arthur suggested. "Maybe he's allergic to her perfume or something. If he's gone all woozy again, Gwen, why is this _our_ problem?"

Merlin studied his hands self-consciously, a resonance of what he'd done – gesturing to raise the van with his mind – passing over him like the shadow of a cloud before the sun.

"Arthur. You don't _know_ him like you think you do. He studies hard to make his grades and when he's not studying he's working to make ends meet and he hasn't got time to meet people and hang out."

Vaguely Merlin thought, he should probably feel more offended.

"So what? We've still got nothing in common." Arthur's sarcasm.

"How about me, for starters?" Gwen's annoyance with her boyfriend made Merlin feel sad rather than vindictively glad, and he wondered why. "How about the fact that you were both raised in single-parent households? How about you can't know what else you might have in common to build a friendship on til you get to know a person and try? You know a million guys from your team and not one of them would be as true a friend as Merlin, if given half the chance you give those idiot jocks."

She thought Merlin could be a true friend. Wasn't that nice?

Except, wait. Friends with Arthur?

His head shot up to add his own protest, just as Arthur shrugged and reached into the pocket of his blue nylon jacket. "What if we go outside and have a look at the van? If you see it's all right and just fine, will you try to sleep off whatever contact high you're nursing?"

He withdrew his hand with a small flashlight in it. Merlin supposed it was a start.

"We should go through the window," he said. "So Madame Noircir doesn't see us go out."

"Why should that matter?" Arthur complained. But he pushed the bedroom door shut tight, between the three of them and the rest of their party.

"I think Merlin's worried that Madame Noircir gave him something on purpose," Gwen guessed.

Merlin didn't answer, just straddled the windowsill and bent his other leg through, rolling to his belly before slipping and dropping down. Gwen followed more carefully, exchanging reassurance for Arthur's caution, and stepped back as Arthur slung himself through the open window.

"Come on," he said. Flicking the flashlight on, he directed the beam several yards ahead of them on the ground, so the glow would illumine not only their steps, but the general area around them also.

Night breeze whispered against the back of Merlin's neck and raised the short hairs as he followed Arthur with Gwen, around the front porch – _why didn't anyone answer, if they were all sitting there when I pounded? unless I never pounded_ – toward the barn.

Was it a hallucination? It bothered him to think of riding quietly, of stumbling blindly, of subsiding prone, all the while _thinking_ that his classmates were broken, bleeding, dying. Why would he be given something to do that to him? What reason would Madame Noircir have for doing that? But he'd never heard of a simple, innocent, allergic reaction causing vivid waking dreams.

The barn doors were open, dark in the white-painted front face of the building like an open mouth.

Exhaling. Inhaling? Screaming, growling, anger-fear-pain?

"It's not here," Arthur said. The flashlight beam swung unsteadily around the indistinct interior, before turning back to them and rendering the older boy invisible. "This is where we parked, but the van's not here."

"Maybe the driver took it back to the city," Gwen began.

"That doesn't make any sense," Arthur objected, annoyed – but Merlin thought, with the van driver rather than either of them. "He drove all the way with us, it's not like he lives around here, and why would he get his own hotel room miles and miles away instead of an extra room here, there are plenty, and then he doesn't have to come back in the –"

Merlin turned in the best-guess direction of the road and began to walk.

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Arthur called after him. "Why can't you just _relax_?"

"Merlin!" Gwen entreated. And then, "We can't leave him alone. Just… come on."

He thought of demanding the flashlight to find the footprints he'd left through the loamy earth of the fields. Then thought of the waste of time if he couldn't, of Madame Noircir coming to check on them and finding the bedroom vacant – and stalked onward even faster.

"You're crazy, you know that?" Arthur yelled behind him.

Gwen murmured something scolding. The flashlight beam stabbed Merlin's back and his own shadow loomed quivering and insubstantial before him.

"Well, he is," Arthur said loudly and crossly. "He's a lunatic and we're idiots to be doing this – just look at him, for hell's sake!"

Gwen murmuring again.

For hell's sake. The words swelled and reverberated around him, a sinister silent aria in the living night. For… hell's… sake.

The fence was as he remembered, shuddering wire but no rusty puncture. Up and over, and then up the slope of the shoulder to the road. Wavering white flash-light and a breath of wind that was cool and damp and smelled a bit like –

Moonlight on _water_.

The road curved and a general gravel patch – he thought of fishing boats hitched to heavy-duty pickups and backed down a launching slip – separated asphalt from the rippling edge of a silver-spangled _lake_.

Right where the ravine ought to be.

He stumbled onto the gravel to the edge of the water, shoving his fingers through his hair and squeezing his head. Light behind him bobbed as the footsteps of his companions approached – light ahead of him bobbed as choppy waves rose and fell. And he was going to be sick. Why couldn't he get any fresh air?

Through the roaring in his ears he heard them murmuring – Gwen concerned, Arthur impatient – felt their hands touching his bent back as his knees trembled beneath his trembling hands.

 _I did something. I did_ something _. Here._

A new sense shouldered past his other five, jumbling them and disorienting him and declaring – _There. Attend_.

Merlin lifted his head – darkness and scattered water – moonlight. His body jerked upright, then tumbled forward, onto his face in the pebbly shallows.

Nerve endings he didn't know he had spoke of impossible depths and inhabited darkness and passages and tunnels and open doorways –

Opened by him.

And something was coming, up that passageway, through that doorway.

He pushed himself up, sucking air into his lungs in a gasp of pure irrational childish fear.

"Hey, get out of there!" Gwen said urgently, still behind him. "I think something's in there…"

Lake Placid? Oh, gosh… the Dagobah swamp.

Not exactly.

The moon-dapples disappeared from the water, in an ever-expanding circle – as trickles and rivulets and rippling waves cascaded shoreward. Twin points of a sort of light Merlin couldn't put a name to rose higher – higher –

A shadow blocked starlight, loomed over them, took shape.

Head with glowing eyes. Shoulders which meant arms and _hands_ – and horns.

Merlin's eyes caught movement, splattering in the water, a whirlpool sucked upward – droplets racing toward them, high dive cannonball-style splash only yards from Merlin, still kneeling in the shallows and shivering now because the thing had just _stepped_ twenty yards at once.

"Run," Arthur advised in a strangled voice.

 _Yeah, I think so._

Merlin scrambled to his feet and raced along behind the other two – flashlight beam bobbing panicked ahead of them – back toward the farmhouse bed-and-breakfast as somehow safer than the random unknown darkness.

"Turn off the light, it'll find us!" Gwen yelled.

"We'll break our necks running in the dark," Arthur panted, "just move!"

Merlin expected earth-shuddering foot-plants like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park – _hells, I'm never turning the TV on again_ – but there was nothing. He glanced over his shoulder to see the moon speared by one horn, the twin points of light rushing toward him like dive-bombing fireflies.

He _knew_ the mouth was open – no teeth, no mechanical ear-scraping scream, but it was open because he'd opened it because it wanted him.

No time to scream, or think. His hand flew of its own accord, as if he could shove a shadow away – really no more illogical than any other part of this whole damn night -

And a ball of fire arced from his palm, sizzling, exploding in the region of the monster's neck. Head snapped back, shadow-body stumbled a few retreating steps, and Merlin fell flat on his butt in surprise.

"What are you doing come on!" Arthur shouted, gripping his upper arm and hauling him bodily to his feet, forcing him to keep running -

Merlin rammed into him like a lineman, pushing him sideways, forcing him off-course and Gwen too, startled into a quiet exclamation on Arthur's other side. Out of the field, into the trees.

Still no thundering footfalls. Merlin was afraid to look. Arthur evidently agreed with the change in direction and kept running into the forest that ringed the farmhouse – still a destination but the direct and open route inadvisable – though probably not as fast as the monster could.

Then Gwen tripped. Arthur passed her, slid to a stop as Merlin dragged her up and shoved her under the low-spreading branches of some kind of needle-leaf tree.

"What does it want?" she sobbed.

"Me, I think," Merlin said. It was something he knew with certainty, though _how_ he knew would have been problematic to explain.

Arthur was on his knees next to them in a rush, and Merlin bent to peer out as stars started to go out one by one, again. It was near, it was huge and could take its time – _could it see in the dark?_ – with those ground-covering steps.

"I'm going to distract it," Arthur said shortly.

Over Arthur's shoulder Merlin could see the square of light that said to him, farmhouse. Were they still watching rom-coms? Were Madame Noircir and her friend still whispering oblivious in shadowy corners, or did they know that three of their charges were missing – did they know where, and who? and _why_?

Arthur put his hand on Merlin's chest – not his whole hand, but the fingers, splayed flat for emphasis - to catch his attention. "You get her to the farmhouse."

Almost his own eyes burned with an inner light, fierce and true, in that one second.

 _He loves her. He really, truly loves her._

Merlin knew he had been wrong about Arthur. Beneath the arrogance and past his poor treatment of the cafeteria staff, he was capable of this kind of love and level-headed heroism – and trust, since he was putting Gwen's life in Merlin's hands.

"Wait, Arthur –" She was trying to hold her boyfriend back; he gave her one agonized look and kissed her hard, his free hand cupping her cheek.

"Go!" he commanded, and Merlin obeyed.

Yanking Gwen toward the square of yellow electricity as Arthur crashed through the underbrush – back toward the lake, it sounded like. He hauled her, sobbing for breath, waving the flashlight erratically, toward reluctant safety.

Merlin obeyed, til Arthur yelped, a sound of anger edged with real fear.

Then he stopped and turned, her hand wrenching free at his sudden movement, but she stopped and turned also.

The shadow loomed, but the twin eye-points weren't visible. In the horizontal-dropped-beam of flashlight – Arthur also horizontal, scrabbling to recover the light, hair gleaming white, face bloodless –

And Merlin knew, some demonic claw would clamp an ankle and drag Arthur back… away into the darkness.

A word. A symbol. For-burning.

It rushed from his lungs like a bellows, leaving him airless, scalding his throat and exploding from his mouth – through his hand –

A second fireball. And maybe not such a great idea for a monster that emerged from the bottom of a _lake_ , but –

It hit the creature squarely where a chest ought to be, and _stuck_.

Arthur flipped to his back to stare upwards at the flames engulfing the monstrosity – bare dark skin, glistening with something that ignited. Gwen clutched Merlin's arm and followed him as he stalked forward, rejecting the monster's attempt to snuff the blaze, feeding and strengthening the –

Reaction. Process. So far from Chem 1. Not even funny.

 _Forbearnan._

They reached Arthur, who got his feet up under him, leaving the flashlight on the ground to gape at the towering inferno above them, the monster clawing the empty air in silent agony.

"What –" Arthur choked. "How the _hell_ –"

Merlin cringed for the expectation of disgust or fear or mockery and said the only sensible word that came to mind. "Magic?"

Without taking his eyes from the crackling flames, Arthur stretched his arm around Merlin's shoulder. Maybe only to touch Gwen, who still clung to Merlin's other arm - but in that moment, the monster convulsed and toppled.

Burning, right toward them – no damn time – Arthur snatched them together, turning his back as if he would take the brunt of the impact.

Merlin squeezed his eyes shut and gripped his companions also and focused and –

Slammed into consciousness like a belly flop off the high-dive. Breathlessness and a pervasive paralyzing ache. Sluggish crawl back to air and clarity of sound and hearing…

He opened his eyes and saw the pink-green-yellow of quilt patchwork very close. It smelled of mothballs and – _something_.

Merlin jerked back and disturbed an object that lay across his shoulder-blades, something that slipped down and away, accompanied by a nearly-porcine grunt. He turned his head and saw the disheveled golden spikes of the back of Arthur's head, as the older boy sleepily tucked his arm at his side, and subsided.

Dawn glow at the open, screen-less window. Of the farmhouse, bed-and-what-about-breakfast.

He tried to roll, and discovered the arm on the side away from Arthur – _geez, in bed with Arthur, do not examine that circumstance too closely_ – pinned, twined in a pair of warm brown arms. Gwen lay curled on her side, eyes still closed and hair tumbled half over her face, the only one of them even using a pillow.

His feet and legs ached, he realized, from hanging off the end of the bed with his shoes still on. And his clothes were damp… He pushed himself up to hands and knees, gingerly extricating himself from the other two, then turned and eased back down to sitting on the foot of the bed, trying not to jostle them.

A chunky cream-colored mug, tipped on its side and empty, rolled away from his foot on the dry polished floorboard.

He gazed down at his palms, lying open on his lap, then blankly out the – screen-less – window.

Last night. What… had… happened.

Before Merlin could begin to answer that question in his mind – hesitating to wake Arthur and Gwen and ask them straight out – a quick double-rap sounded on the bedroom door. Beside and behind him, Arthur grunted and stirred, as the door swung open and the round dark face of Madame Noircir peered around at him. Eyes so dark brown the iris blended with the pupil, leaving the white stark and visible all around, teeth gleaming in a perpetual smile that had nothing to do with genuine warmth. She looked him over, head to toe, then flicked a glance behind him, to either side.

He wanted to say, just to provoke a reaction, _I exploded your monster_. Didn't quite dare.

What if she said, _what monster_. What if she said, _never mind we'll try again and this time you won't be so lucky, young… nemesis_?

She said, "How are you feeling."

"Much better thank you," he returned, flatly.

Because something had happened, whether he was meant to be aware of it, meant to remember it, meant to retain sanity – or even life itself? And she was probably the last person with whom he'd ever want to discuss it honestly.

Perhaps with Dr. Gaius, his advisor and professor of History of the English Language.

Gwen offered, "He was feverish, but only for a short while."

Also in a tone particularly bland for her; Merlin glanced to see that she'd rolled to her back and rested propped up on the pillows, arms crossed almost defiantly and certainly protectively over her chest, and feet at the ankles. Socks on, shoes off – he saw them dropped on the braided rag rug, dried mud in the treads and bits of grass clinging to still-tied laces.

"So you three had a restful night," Madame Noircir said.

Merlin was still facing Gwen. Without moving, she shifted her eyes past him to Arthur. Who said, "No complaints. Aside from sharing the room, but… hell, we're college students. We're used to that."

He swung around to look at Arthur, who stood from the bed to the side of the window, lounging unconcerned next to the curtain hook. Just as if he hadn't seen monsters or run for his life, or offered himself as bait for the safety of his girlfriend and a freshman he found annoying.

Had it been real, or all in Merlin's head?

 _Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?..._ According to Dumbledore.

Or they had silently agreed to reveal nothing to Madame Noircir. Maybe never to discuss it with each other, either. And he was fine with that.

Madame Noircir hummed neutrally. " _Le_ _petit déjeuner_ _est_ _dans_ _la_ _cuisine_."

" _Merci_ ," Arthur said.

And Gwen added, " _Nous_ _serons_ _là_ _dans_ _une_ _minute_."

Black eyes scrutinized them, even as she slowly closed the door. For a moment, they all stayed still – then Arthur reached for his jacket, and Gwen scooted and bent for her shoes. Merlin looked for his still-missing pack – had it been left in the van? – and decided that clean shorts and brushed teeth took second seat to living through a waking nightmare, and food.

Arthur was patting the pockets of his jacket, one-handed as he reached to open the door. "My flashlight's missing," he remarked.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

An hour later, they piled into the van for the ride back to the university, though Madame Noircir remained behind – as she hadn't driven cross-state with them the day before, either.

Merlin found his pack wedged on the floor between his seat and the back of Arthur and Gwen's, ahead of him. Everything undisturbed to his eyes, he clutched it on his lap as they jounced over the ruts back toward the road. Gwen gazed out her window, chin on her fist, and he wondered if she could see the lake.

He wondered if there was a lake.

" _Regardez_!" the purple-haired French girl exclaimed from the backseat, pointing for the benefit of her two male companions. She added a phrase Merlin didn't quite follow, except for one word. _Le feu_. Fire.

 _Forbearnan._

Through the window opposite, he caught glimpses of a blackened area, still glowing orange-hot beneath an enormous but unidentifiable collapsed frame of ash. Gwen turned her head to keep her eyes on it as long as possible also, and Arthur leaned over her, ducking down to look with silent intensity.

Merlin felt oddly self-conscious, and slipped his flash-cards from his pack along with his textbook, _History of the English Language_ , letting his bag drop to the floor. As they reached the road, Arthur turned – not to face forward again, but further backwards to look at Merlin, swaying with the motion of the vehicle.

"So what are you studying, then," he said. And if there was a hint of arrogant challenge remaining in his voice, there was also curiosity.

"Old English," Merlin said, turning the stack of cards to show the top one. _Forbearnan_ , next to the symbol of a flame, he'd doodled last week during class.

Arthur stared at it for a moment, then his mouth pulled sideways in an almost-smile. "That must be so handy," he drawled sardonically. "I bet you use that absolutely all the time."

Gwen glanced between them, eyebrows raised as if uncertain how he'd take Arthur's sarcasm, but didn't say anything. And Merlin found there was a world of difference in catching half that mockery, shared among a group of others when one was the outsider – and having all of it tossed directly at him alone. It was inclusive, it invited retaliation, it assumed a comradely sort of contest.

It implied friendship.

Merlin lifted his chin, letting his own smile out. "You know, it actually has. Once or twice."

The purple-haired French girl snapped something snide – the gist of which was, _En f_ _rançais_ _, s'il vous plait._

And Arthur immediately responded, his stream of effortless and perfect French sounding so superior it shut the purple-haired girl up. She glared at Merlin; Gwen was laughing. Arthur tossed him a half-grin as he faced forward, finishing the last phrase of his rejoinder.

And that, Merlin caught. _Mon ami_. Emphasis on _mon_.

 _Don't you pick on my friend. Only I get to do that._

He leaned against the window, absently flipping cards. And smiling.

 **A/N: Hopefully the French was all understandable by context – I confess to using an online translator when my own rusty memory stuck…**

 **Of course, the HP quote. *grins* As well as a nod to Edmund at the end of "Prince Caspian", if anyone noticed.**

 **Also, I'm aware that this story in particular leaves a lot of questions unanswered… all I can say to that is, use your imaginations! And, the next story is close canon, touching on episode 1.8 "The Beginning of the End", and featuring Merlin and Mordred as brothers. Just to whet your literary appetites, or… something.**


	5. Things That Go Bump in the Night 1

**Things That Go Bump In The Night**

" _Hush, child  
The darkness will rise from the deep  
And carry you down into sleep…"_

"Mordred's Lullaby" ~ Heather Dale

 _(Gaius)_

Trust was a strange thing, Gaius mused to himself.

It placed his precious secret compendium of magic – his constant companion during his own training years, swollen with his additions, notes and sketches – in the hands of a bumbling young idiot who charged into situations without thinking, verbally and physically.

The boy raised his head just slightly, enough for his clear blue eyes to meet Gaius' own.

"But this is a book of magic," he said. Exactly as if someone had handed him a sack of gold and offhandedly said, _Yours now_.

"Which is why you must keep it hidden," Gaius ordered with as much severity as he could muster. His old heart pounded like a smith's hammer for his daring, atrophied now with years and extreme caution.

Merlin turned the pages with delighted reverence, and Gaius breathed a little easier, daring to hope it would not be ripped and dog-eared and _discovered_ , by the week's end. And when he promised, "I will study every word," Gaius realized a little more fully, the trust the boy – and his mother – had placed in him.

And the wealth of knowledge, the key to power, that book represented, suddenly did not seem like so much, compared to this bright young life.

The knock interrupted them both, and Gaius shrugged off the serious moment with a comment about the call of Merlin's destiny – an arrogant but good-hearted young prince – but not his thoughts.

He caught his charge's last glance – a grin and a roll of those blue eyes – before the gawky boy charged back _out_ of his chamber, with a slam of the door. And in the sudden stillness of his private sanctuary – now to be shared with an impetuous young sorcerer – Gaius felt his way to his desk, and sank into the chair behind it. He felt quite old, suddenly – but couldn't deny the breath of freshness that promised to enliven his life.

Hunith's letter was still rolled on the desktop, set to the side. Gaius heaved a sigh, contemplating it, then reached for it again. And his glasses.

 _My dear Gaius, I turn to you, for I feel lost and alone and don't know who to trust. It is every mother's fate to think her children are special, and yet I would give my life that my two boys were not so._

 _Ours is a small village and Merlin is so clearly at odds with people here that, if he were to remain, I fear what would become of him. He was only a young boy when his father was forced to leave Ealdor, but Merlin remembers him and still speaks of him, especially to his younger brother. I need not tell you my fears for what would become of any of them, if they were to seek out their father in his solitary place of refuge. But Merlin still needs a hand to hold, a voice to guide, someone that might help him find a purpose for his gifts._

 _As for his younger brother, I have only told Merlin that he will be going to live with distant relations among the druids. He knows little of the Seeing I have informed you of before now, and Mordred knows even less. Please, dear friend, keep it so for all our sakes! I cannot imagine the devastation to my sons, and perhaps even to the kingdom or the world, if these things are to be believed, if they were to know that such disparate destinies awaited them. One to bring hope and light, life and freedom, the other to destroy all that his brother has built. Please God, that it may still be averted!_

 _I beg you, if you understand a mother's love for her sons, keep Merlin safe, and may God save you both._

Gaius sighed again. If this one, whose magic was instinctive and protective, truly a gift, worried himself a monster and was surprised to be considered a hero, what of the younger and his curse? He was glad – and deep down, perhaps a bit ashamed of himself to feel it – that his task was only to keep the elder safe and secret on his headlong and sometimes reckless journey toward the light.

He could not imagine the responsibility of attempting to deny the darkness foretold for the younger.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

 _(Mordred – months later)_

"Keep your head down, boy."

The druid's hand on the hood of his cloak was firm, but his voice was kind. Mordred obediently dropped his gaze from the pinnacles of Camelot's citadel to the rough cobblestones lining the street market.

 _What about my brother?_ he asked Cerdan. Camelot was not a place the druids went, but this time, his guardian had told him, needs must.

 _I know you miss him_. Cerdan's hand moved to his shoulder and squeezed. _But he'll be safer if we don't try to see him._

The hand squeezed again, a warning to stop, and Mordred lifted his head enough to see the clay dishes and various-colored powders of the herbalist's cart. He paid no attention to his elders' short conversation until the seller said, in an odd tone of voice, "I'm sorry."

And then, sudden confusion. Red-cloaked guards rushed toward them through the crowded street, and Cerdan unceremoniously stuffed Mordred under the cart. " _Run_!"

So he did. Behind the carts and stalls, to the end of the street – emerging to collide with Cerdan again. His confused relief was short-lived; his guardian grabbed his hand and ran again, himself terrified.

Not that way. Spin and run again, right to the very gate of the citadel. Inside, no one had alerted yet – outside, more and more red cloaks were chasing and yelling. One leaped even from the side of the drawbridge, with a flash of silver light in his hand.

Pain sliced through Mordred's right arm, above the elbow. He _screamed_ – and heard Cerdan yell as that guard was thrown flying backward into a stone wall.

" _Abanne ati_!" As the high heavy gates began to obey his guardian's spell, and swing shut on their own, Cerdan shoved him forward. "Run. Run, run!"

Mordred obeyed again, clutching his arm as if to keep the pain from spreading. There were more guards here, and any moment they'd be pointing and shouting also. His brother was here, somewhere…

 _Merlin!_ he called, as loud as he could. _Help me!_

Staggering behind a half-unloaded cart of supplies, he made it to a well, bounded by a stone wall and a wide lip almost waist-high on him, and sank to his knees in its shadow.

 _They're searching for me!_ he tried again. Merlin wasn't nearly as good at this as he was, he'd have to be close to respond, or have Mordred in his line of sight. _They're going to kill me!_ The sun was too bright, and tears glazed his eyes. He couldn't think past finding his brother – and then there he was.

Merlin. In the same blue shirt and red scarf he'd left home in, almost a year ago when Mordred had been taken by the druid clan as Cerdan's apprentice. He stepped out from the shadow of an open door and glanced about the courtyard, as determined as he'd ever been, rescuing Mordred from certain village boys who weren't kind. His eyes lit on Mordred with relief and concern.

 _This way_. Merlin beckoned, checking round to see if either of them had been spotted by the searching guards. _Run. Run!_

Mordred had never felt so slow or exposed. Like a nightmare, for a moment he felt as if he would run forever and never reach safety. And then he was out of the sun, away from the shouting, with his brother's longer stronger arm around him. He took one sobbing breath of the familiar scent – magic and Merlin and home – noticing there were new scents included that made him think of the herbalist's cart.

Merlin barred the door behind them and led him several stairs at a time upwards. They passed a statue of a griffon that was bigger than Mordred, and sprinted down a short gallery. Merlin stopped so suddenly that Mordred ran into his back, but didn't question it when his older brother bundled him back and into a corner behind another small curving stair, to hide and wait.

 _What happened?_ Merlin demanded, bracing in his crouch to watch for pursuers, his back heaving with panting breaths, brushing into Mordred and sending flickers of pain through his arm. Mordred didn't mind at all.

 _Cerdan brought me into town for supplies_ , he answered. _And then there were guards – I don't know what happened to him!_

 _But they saw you?_ Merlin twisted to glance over his shoulder.

Mordred nodded tiredly, and Merlin looked him over before untying his blue-green cloak, a sort of going-away, remember-I-love-you present from their mother when he left with Cerdan, the week after Merlin had traveled to Camelot, himself. Merlin bundled the garment swiftly so that only the darker lining showed in a lump of indiscriminate fabric, then hissed in a way that surprised Mordred – til he looked down and saw blood seeping through his fingers, staining his shirt.

 _Here_ , Merlin told him, peeling off his jacket and helping Mordred into it carefully, rolling up the cuffs for him, wiping his telltale blood-smeared fingers on the material of his shirt where it wouldn't show. _They'll be looking for a druid. Smile at people and look curious, and I'll get you to Gaius for now, all right? He's the physician and my friend, we can trust him._

 _He knows about magic?_ Mordred asked.

Merlin gave him a smile and nod, encouragement and reassurance that always made Mordred feel able to do whatever his brother asked of him.

He hoped it wasn't far to this Gaius. He hoped the physician who knew about magic, would know about curses, too.

They passed many people. Some Merlin greeted and explained, "This is my brother…" but didn't linger to chat. And some, Merlin drew back against the wall til they passed. Like the guards.

And then – " _Mer_ lin!"

Mordred had never heard a more imperious voice. He peeked out from behind his brother's elbow to see a young man with straight blond hair, dressed rather plainly in dark trousers and a red shirt unlaced at the throat, a long tanned jacket trailing behind him as he strode the corridor that didn't quite cover his fine boots - or the sword at his side. Mordred felt his eyebrows rise.

"Arthur!" Merlin exclaimed, and Mordred's eyebrows tried to join his hairline – as in, the prince of Camelot? Arthur Pendragon, and his brother used his given name. "I was just trying to – going to – um, running an errand for Gaius."

"I hope you've finished, you're to get back there and stay there, or have you not noticed the citadel is on alert," the prince said. It was almost a sneer, but Mordred had seen enough men trying to hide their worry, in the druid camp, to recognize it now.

"What – is going on?" Merlin asked, and Mordred felt fearful impatience with his older brother's poor pretending. Though evidently the prince didn't know him well enough to be suspicious at that tone.

"An intruder," the prince answered, and suddenly ice-blue eyes were pinning Mordred in place. "Who's this?"

"My brother," Merlin said immediately – and it probably helped that they did look a lot alike. "He's visiting in from the country, a neighbor who was traveling brought him by last night."

The prince's eyes narrowed. "And you didn't think to inform me? What about your duties?"

"He'll probably be with Gaius more than me during the day," Merlin retorted. "He won't get in the way and yes I did too tell you, last week when I asked for time off because he was coming."

That was a little better, Mordred supposed, though anyone who really knew Merlin knew that when he spoke so fast and glib, he wasn't telling the truth.

"You never asked me for time off." The prince's frown transferred to Mordred's taller brother, who didn't seem affected in the slightest.

"I did, it was the night you had roast chicken and two _full_ goblets of wine and went to bed early and then I asked you before I left and you grunted and mumbled and I said what's that sire, and you said absolutely not and don't forget the laundry, in a very unprincely snarl and really if you had a brother you'd be more understanding of people's requests for time off."

Mordred was holding his breath. Often in the village, when his brother spoke like this, he ended up on the receiving end of serious unkindness.

"Stop babbling, Merlin," the prince said, giving him a half-hearted grimace. "I'm glad I don't have a brother, if he was going to be one like you."

"Cleverer and handsomer?" Merlin suggested with a grin.

The prince shook his head and made a fist – Mordred cringed – but he only shoved Merlin's shoulder with it, and Merlin's grin didn't falter one bit. "Idiot," the prince said, and to Mordred it sounded fond. But then his gaze was on Mordred again, and he remembered, Pendragon. "He does all the talking so you don't have to, is that it?"

Mordred didn't answer, and the prince shifted to continue on his way.

"Oh, and Merlin," he added. "Keep your brother in Gaius' chambers. We've already searched there."

He couldn't help watching the prince walk away from them; he'd never seen anyone walk like they owned the whole world.

 _Does he know, about me?_

 _Sometimes_ , Merlin answered, glancing down at him from watching Arthur walk away, too, _it is hard to tell what he knows. Come on, we're safe for now. Let's get Gaius to have a look at your arm._

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

 _(Merlin)_

One of the last things Merlin's father had said to him, before the rumors and then the knights came to chase Balinor from Ealdor, and nearly from Merlin's memory, was that if anything ever happened to him, Merlin was to take care of his mother and his brother. Even as young as he'd been when his father was forced to disappear from their lives, Merlin had taken that charge very seriously.

Mordred had nightmares from a very early age. Merlin had sufficient control of his magic to make the little carved animals their father had made and then left for their toys, dance about in midair to soothe his baby brother back to sleep. As they both got older, Merlin would roll over under the blanket they shared on the floor, and nudge Mordred awake from his slumbering terror. Then they'd lie on their bellies, bodies touching down one side, and Merlin would make pictures from the sparks in the fireplace til Mordred's eyes grew peacefully heavy.

When he'd heard of Lady Morgana's nightmares, he'd _wondered_ , til Gaius had explained. Not the same thing.

Merlin leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together, watching his younger brother fall into an exhausted sleep, pale and a bit sweaty, but his arm bandaged nicely and on its way to healing.

"The druids were supposed to be keeping him safe," he said aloud.

Gaius turned from his work-table, the little glass vial in his hand raised to the light to check for desired color and consistency. "No one with magic is safe in Camelot, I trust you know that very well by now," he said sternly.

"I do, I know," Merlin answered. "It's just…" He sighed. A shock to hear his little brother in such proximity, screaming for help. "We'll, he's safe enough now, I guess."

Gaius grunted, turning to his work again. "Perhaps not for long. We need to get him back to the druid clan he's been living with, before someone remarks on the coincidence of a young boy arriving as your visitor the very hour the guards lose a fugitive of the same age and gender."

Merlin straightened to object, "Arthur wouldn't –"

Gaius raised a forbidding eyebrow. "Uther would. Come tomorrow, you must discover what Arthur knows about the reported locations of druid encampments, and return your brother to them."

"I wish he could stay a few days," Merlin protested. "What about his wound, surely he needs rest and care?"

"Which the druids can give," Gaius countered. Setting the vial down, he stared at Merlin a moment. Then said slowly, "What has your mother told you about Mordred's nightmares?"

Merlin shrugged, not sure what the old man was getting at. "I remember he's had them since he was a baby. She's said that he must be woken from them as quickly as possible, and you told me, they were probably not anything like Morgana's."

"That's all true." Gaius ducked his head to observe the sleeping boy a moment more. "Have you ever noticed anything unusual happening, while the nightmare was still occurring, and before either you or your mother could wake him?"

"You mean like magic?" Merlin said.

"Anything unusual." Gaius did not commit to specifics.

"Once or twice, I thought… he was attracting the shadows, somehow," Merlin said, but that was a vague youthful memory. "I could have been wrong. I remember thinking how bad the dream must be if his magic could – I don't know, reflect his dreams onto his surroundings. Maybe it was just me, scared for him and imagining the darkness closing in because I was young myself and couldn't do much… But he never remembers anything of what he's seen – or even felt, if he was scared in the dream. It's only that he's so agitated while it's happening."

"Did your mother," Gaius said deliberately, "ever mention a curse?"

Merlin was on his feet before he knew he intended to move, but said nothing. Gaius turned back to his worktable, ladled water from their bucket into four mismatched bowls, then poured a few drops from the vial he'd been working with, into each.

"I need your hands, Merlin," Gaius said, picking up two of the bowls and indicating with a nod of his white-haired head that Merlin should do the same.

He obeyed, following the old physician – with a brief curious sniff at the bowl in his right hand, smelled like chamomile and sage – back to the patient's bed where Mordred slept. Gaius positioned himself carefully, holding each bowl out to the sides – north and east, Merlin realized, and did the same with his two out south and west.

"Gaius," he said," what is going on? Is there something wrong with Mordred?"

"Not yet," Gaius answered. "Light all four bowls at once, please, Merlin, this requires simultaneous fire of a magical nature."

Merlin instinctively twisted to see that the chamber door was shut. It never – okay, hardly ever – happened that his old mentor requested magic. There was no one there, of course – but Merlin gave Gaius another questioning glance before speaking the spell. " _Forbearnan samod_."

Gaius nodded approval as tongues of flame flickered their dance above all four bowls at once. Slowly and carefully he lowered the bowls to the floor; Merlin copied his movements and Mordred slept on, oblivious.

"What do you mean, not yet?" Merlin asked when Gaius had straightened – more slowly than he, due to age.

"When you were an infant, your magic was obvious, according to your mother." Gaius retreated to the physician's stool, sat straight-backed with his hands on his knees to watch Mordred sleep. "Strong and controlled – relatively speaking of course, at least it wasn't chaotic or destructive. You've heard her refer to it as your gift, haven't you?"

Merlin nodded, dragging the bench from the table to straddle it, where he could give his attention to Gaius, while keeping his brother in range of his vision, too.

"Do you recall an old woman named Valdis, in your village, around the time of your brother's birth?" Gaius asked. "I have the impression from your mother that she wasn't a permanent resident, as such."

"No, I…" he paused. "There was an old woman who helped my mother. I sat outside our door and my father… walked back and forth. Worrying. And the old woman told us we could come in – and my mother lay in the bed with Mordred so tiny in her arm, and she was crying – and I never saw the old woman again."

Gaius nodded. "Valdis was a Seer. She told your mother, each of her sons had a destiny laid on him, foretold since time beyond memory."

Merlin nodded again, leaning forward. "And we've said, mine is to protect Arthur because he'll be a great king. Someday." He held his tongue on the sarcastic details he voiced more often than his hope, hidden far deeper than daily irritations.

"Yes. We have." One of Gaius' eyebrows arched as he contemplated the sleeping boy.

"So Mordred has one, too? Do you suppose it might be the same as mine? I don't think he's ready for Camelot yet, but someday…" Merlin couldn't help smiling, thinking of having his brother with him. Mordred had always been a bit of an old soul; he'd understand and share Merlin's worries as even Gaius couldn't.

But Gaius was shaking his head. "Unfortunately, your mother was told that your destiny and Mordred's were both equal and opposite."

"What… does that mean?"

"It means that only one of you can fulfill your destiny. If you succeed, Mordred fails. And if he succeeds – you fail."

"That doesn't make sense, Gaius," Merlin said. "How can only one destiny succeed? Doesn't a destiny _have_ to succeed? And if mine is protecting Arthur, saving his life with magic, does that mean –" He stopped short, his mouth suddenly dry.

"It means your brother will bring about Arthur's doom," Gaius said heavily.

"No." Merlin was on his feet again. "What if we were wrong about my destiny –" Gaius gave him a _look_ , and his heart lurched in his chest; no, he wouldn't want any other, anymore – but how was it fair if Mordred didn't have the same chance to choose? "No, it _can't_ be. Mordred doesn't even know Arthur, and Arthur really is decent, for a prince, what reason would Mordred ever have, to – to –"

 _Kill Arthur_ , he couldn't say. And if it was true, how could Merlin protect his prince from his own brother? It was not the same at all as protecting him from someone like the Collins witch or Valiant or Sophia-the-sidhe.

"Which is why," Gaius gestured, and Merlin looked back at the flickering bowls, fire and liquid, "we are trying to keep that curse from taking hold."

"Oh," Merlin said. _Oh_. "So there's a chance that won't be his destiny?"

Gaius shook his head. "I cannot say, Merlin. This is why he belongs with the druids, who know so much more about this. He should not be so close to the object of his destiny, and without the proper safeguards, as young as he is."

"But I thought," Merlin stuttered, "the bowls, the fire…"

"I have done my very best," Gaius said. "But no. I am not _sure_."

"All we have to do though is watch him tonight, right?" Merlin demanded. "Wake him from the nightmares? Will that keep his destiny from – taking hold?"

"Again, I cannot be certain," Gaius said, brusquely, irritated as always to be questioned – at least when he had no definite answers to give. "This close to Arthur, if the prince's death is Mordred's destiny to accomplish, and –"

"And what?" Merlin asked narrowly.

"There is another power very near here who has an interest in seeing every aspect of destiny and prophecy fulfilled."

He straightened, knowing what the old man meant. Kilgarrah, reluctant ally and game-player; Merlin could never decide what the dragon's plans for _Arthur_ might be, in the end. "Do you think he might –"

"Merlin!" Gaius said, suddenly and sharply anxious; he knocked over the stool and staggered a bit in rising and retreating, pointing toward the window over the table.

He spun to see – black smoke.

Oozing around the panes stood ajar, as if a great fire burned right outside – a high citadel tower. It puffed not upwards but sideways, floating – bunching – reaching and twisting, tendrils connecting and strengthening with a sickeningly relentless indolence.

 _What do I do? What do I do?_

Merlin stepped between the oozing darkness – too opaque for mere smoke, too sly and intelligent and malevolent – and his brother, spreading open palms.

His mind was wiped blank of spells. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could use – rising terror tightened his throat as he thought of midnight in his mother's hut and the darkness closing in.

"Wake him up!" Merlin shouted to Gaius. Some piece of furniture clattered behind him; he spoke again in desperation. " _Ic the aflieman wirgness_!" Leaning forward, bracing as if he could push the trailing evil back through the window, out to the darkness.

It didn't slow. Like blood in water it traveled through the air, but without fading or diluting.

"He isn't waking!" Gaius called behind him, a note of panic in his normally-calm physician's tone.

What would happen if he touched it? He didn't want to know, but it curled and roiled forward, undeterred – his hand was still outstretched, but he took an involuntary step back.

Then the door opened.

The prince entered, pushing his way inside as he always did, with arrogant assurance of his right to do so, no matter which room. Seeing the foul black cloud building in midair where it _did not_ belong, Arthur froze, eyes wide.

And it seemed to Merlin, the darkness _paused_.

Noting the newcomer. Recognizing him. Itself the palpable representation of Arthur's destined doom.

Oh… _no_.

Merlin reacted without thinking as the miasma shifted – preparing to take its victim directly? – lunging for the closest tendril. _The_ hell _you will_!

His fingers closed around it – and he felt nothing but air. But the rest of the smoke shot forward, wrapping around Merlin's wrist… then diminishing as if it was absorbed into his palm.

Merlin's arm numbed – his heart-rate –

slowed –

Overwhelming pain spiked through him, every single nerve exploding into –

 _Darkness._

He was filled to bursting with a roiling fury of palpable and concentrated evil, searching and hungry, and he resisted, feeling his mind scoured and his stomach turned inside out –

Memories of fear. _What-is-happening… what-do-I-do… what-if-it-works-what-if-it-doesn't…_

 _WhatifIgetcaught – !_

The moment of absolute and roaring silence that always accompanied death - that he remembered, that he felt in the darkness, Mary Collins Knight Valiant Edwin Sophia - repeated over and over and unending. Gladness that he lived undiscovered churned with guilt that he killed – a sick delight in and shame of his power. Over and over. Unending. The absolute worst of what fulfilling his destiny meant. Terrible things – tempting things.

The darkness oozed into a place in his soul where his innocence had been. Before Camelot, before Arthur…

It filled the hollow that deceit and law-breaking and isolation left and whispered _are you really different than anyone else who kills to achieve their own ends and wouldn't it be better to accomplish them more swiftly and easily –_

 _If Uther is no more, you need never fear retribution for your magic._

 _If you care about nothing and no one, then you never need suffer loss again._

 _If there never is any anger or betrayal or disgust in those princely blue eyes because there is no light of life left in those princely blue eyes._

 _If you don't have to worry about Arthur anymore._

 _Then your magic would be utterly free._

He felt himself shuddering. Someone was yelling and the discordance filled his ears; he resisted the pull and influence of the darkness…

 _Why resist? It's impossible, in the end, death ultimately inevitable –_

no. no. all else failing, he'd have to live with himself and he couldn't. he couldn't, if he gave in, and so –

He reached blindly beyond the darkness, to the light of his magic. No matter what use he molded it to when it was brought forth, always it felt so pure inside.

A thread. A spark. A drop. A crumb. Enough.

Merlin woke on his feet, throat hoarse as if from screaming, light blazing like noonday through the chamber – but Arthur and Gaius remained in place only moments had passed it was still midnight and Mordred still sleeping he must not have been screaming after all –

The palpable evil and darkness disappeared, rolling in on itself and dissolving, releasing Merlin's hand and wrist, drawing back from his entire arm like blood draining from a slashed wound but horizontally. And then it was gone, the other men blinking the shock of light from their eyes as the room dimmed to ordinary candle-glow. Merlin dropped his arm heavily, staggering with exhaustion and a full-body ache – but no more than any other day after stable duty or training exercises.

"Merlin!" Gaius exclaimed. The old physician's bulk, surprisingly strong, appeared under his right arm to support him.

But Arthur.

Braced back against the door behind him on one open palm, eyes and mouth wide with shock. Of the sort Merlin had seen on the prince's face before, when - _magic_.

He'd seen. The fear Merlin felt was old and familiar and should have been worn dull from experience, but it wasn't it was razor sharp slicing his lungs to useless ribbons and shredding his heart even as it struggled to continue beating.

"Was that magic," Arthur stated, in the flat tone he reserved for hiding all confusing emotion. Pointless, he said it, and yet so significantly. "Merlin. You just did magic."

Merlin didn't look away – couldn't look away – the anger in Arthur's eyes was his lifeline and without it he'd drown in despair. It was reaction, not conclusion – it was transition, not decision.

But when the prince pushed upright and stalked forward, his hand was nowhere near the sword-hilt at his hip as if he knew instinctively that neither Merlin nor his magic could ever harm him. That was something, and that was everything.

Arthur demanded, "Explain to me. Right now. What just happened."

"A visible manifestation of a curse," Gaius said. He was simultaneously trying to check the signs of Merlin's physical health, lead him to a seat, and respect the moment between royal and servant. "Merlin challenged it in his brother's place and… won."

Only for his brother would Merlin look away from Arthur, and only because Arthur was trying to pull him to the bench as well. Mordred slept so peacefully, Merlin dared to hope – for him at least…

"That did it, then? Mordred's free? No more nightmares, no more –" _Destiny to kill princes and topple kingdoms into chaos and war?_ Merlin couldn't say.

"How often do I have to say it before you understand?" Gaius scolded. "I am no expert, I cannot know for certain."

The bench hit the back of Merlin's knees and he sank – but because he was somehow clutching handfuls of Arthur's long jacket, the prince dropped down beside him, rather than break his hold. "For my brother," Merlin said to him, searching his face and finding nothing he recognized, now. "You understand, don't you? To save my brother's life, I had to. I had to save…"

"Calm down, no one's hurting you," Arthur said, and didn't even push Merlin's hands away. Shielding, it may be, his ignorance and shock, with sarcasm. "I didn't know you could do magic – you learned a spell to protect your brother from this curse? What sorcerer cast it – that's who's responsible, we'll find him and make him –"

"I'm afraid this curse doesn't work like that, sire," Gaius said, shaking his head. "Greatness naturally requires a rise and a fall – if someone can be responsible for aiding one action, another will be responsible for its converse. Eventually. In this case, we had assumed that fate had chosen two brothers to be each other's opposites, opponents, but now…"

"You mean, I may have taken the curse on myself?" Merlin blurted, aghast. "I thought I…" _Resisted_.

He wanted to shove himself away from Arthur for the prince's own safety, _just in case_ , but his legs were too wobbly to move his weight on the bench, other than to sway in place. He did manage to let go of Arthur's jacket, and the prince settled back to a distance more comfortable for both of them.

"I believe you may have deflected it from Mordred," Gaius said, in the stern voice he used when answering Merlin's less-rational suggestions, or when forced to present a theory he had no evidence to support. "I am not certain it is possible to simply erase such a thing from existence."

"So it may still find someone to fulfill it?" Merlin said.

Gaius shrugged and part of Merlin wished he could change things back – to know who was destined to kill Arthur would be a relief in knowing that nothing and no one else could. But it could not be so clear-cut, and he would not have that person be his little brother, for all the world. Honestly, it might be better if _he_ could somehow carry it without losing any part of himself, or his control…

"I think we are done with this for tonight, at least," the old physician added. "If Mordred is to remain until his arm heals and we find a way of returning him to the druids-"

Merlin glanced up at Arthur – brief dawning realization, quirked eyebrow of disapproval at Merlin for his subterfuge during the earlier search – but the prince didn't interrupt.

"We will have to have to put more precautions in place tomorrow," Gaius finished.

"Yes," Arthur said, turning his gaze from Mordred to Merlin, in narrow calculation. "We will."

 **A/N: Epic Thanksgiving, guys. I burned myself on my chin** _ **and**_ **started a fire in the kitchen, and those were** _ **two separate incidents**_ **. On a better note, though, I'm past 45K for NaNoWriMo, so it's just a sprint to the finish next week before I can start** _ **Released by Truth**_ **again…**

 **Chamomile and sage are both good for preventing nightmares.** _ **Samod**_ **means simultaneously, at the same time;** _ **Ic the aflieman wirgness**_ **basically translates, I banish thee, curse. Valdis was, I believe, the old woman with the Horn of Cathbhadh. And, of course, dialogue from ep.1.8 "The Beginning of the End".**


	6. Things That Go Bump in the Night 2

**Things That Go Bump in the Night**

" _Hush, child_

 _The darkness will rise from the deep,_

 _And carry you down into sleep…"_

Mordred's Lullaby ~ Heather Dale

 _(Arthur)_

"Whose greatness?" Arthur said, leisurely stripping his gloves from his hands.

Merlin looked up from the table in Arthur's bedchamber, where he sat with sharpening stone and polishing rag to tend to the prince's weapons, sword and dagger.

And _that_ , because Arthur made a concerted effort toward normalcy today, in spite of yesterday's revelation. In spite of the fact that nearly every time he looked at his thin ragged manservant, he saw the outstretched hand of command, the strong erect posture, the golden eyes – the choking black mist.

The prickle of fear he couldn't quite suppress at the thought of Merlin having magic, was soothed by the undeniable sense of relief he'd felt, that his servant – friend – had been able to defend himself against such an insidious threat. He had been trying to act normally too, Arthur thought. A bit more respectful than usual, a bit quieter – but then, there was a lot on both their minds.

"Sorry, greatness?" Merlin said, moving his cloth by feel, the crinkle at the corners of his eyes betraying his teasing. " _You_? Just said, _greatness_?"

Incorrigible. And Arthur was secretly glad to see it – it meant that _magic_ didn't change _Merlin_. Much.

"Gaius said, greatness requires a rise and a fall," Arthur reminded him, ignoring the jibe. For now. "Someone responsible for both, and he assumed you and your brother had been chosen. And, as you will never be great at anything…" Deliberately he goaded. Merlin didn't often satisfy his curiosity – now he knew why – but sometimes he could be provoked into hiding less.

And he was provoked, Arthur could tell by the way his spine jerked straight and his eyebrows rose – but he reconsidered. Quietly. Settling back into his habitual borderline-disrespectful slouch, toying with his idle rag. Then he sighed in surrender.

"Evidently it's you," he said, flapping the rag at Arthur. "Destiny has marked your reign for legend. So I'm told."

Arthur couldn't quite stop a snort, himself. He had some mighty big boots to fill among his ancestors; most days he only hoped he didn't disgrace them and muck things up too badly. But… "Wait, so you think your destiny is to help me, what? rise to greatness?"

Merlin's mouth quirked. "Well, you know what they say about hot air…"

"Shut up." Arthur chucked one of his gloves at Merlin's head, though he ducked successfully. Grinning – and Arthur was nearly distracted. He spun on his heel to saunter away, down the length of the rug before his fireplace. "But that means… you think your brother's destiny is to… bring me down?"

He turned again, and now Merlin was intent on his polishing. What an eye for detail, had Merlin. So very diligent.

"How?" Arthur said. For discussion's sake. "Like, betraying us to our enemies? Defeating me? he's just a kid!"

"I know," Merlin told the sword, barely audible. "It's why the druids have been trying to keep the curse from taking hold of him. Gaius went to the vendor in the lower town that Cerdan –" he glanced up under his shaggy fringe of black hair and clarified, "Mordred's mentor, the druid the guards killed yesterday because he wouldn't surrender. Anyway, Gaius got the same supplies the druid was after, and believes he's got a good idea how to protect Mordred one more night, before we bring him back to the others in the forest."

"Does he know?" Arthur said, wondering if he believed all this, himself. Even though he had seen that surreal black smoke that reeked of evil with his own eyes. "Mordred, I mean."

Merlin shook his head slowly, dropping the rag to his knee. "I don't know… When we wake him, it seems to stop, so… whatever the druids do, he probably sleeps through it. Only last night we couldn't wake him…"

Arthur made three and a half more trips along the length of his rug, before he spoke again. "And what about you?"

"What about me?" Merlin flashed a grin in spite of full comprehension of Arthur's meaning; Arthur cocked a stern eyebrow at the carelessness of his own safety.

"Gaius said it might have diverted to you?"

Merlin sighed again. Laid aside his rag, stretched himself up from his seat and approached Arthur carrying the finished sword on his open palms. "That is why," he said lightly, "Gaius wants us separated, tonight. Both of us in the same place will be sure to draw the curse – but apart, we can tell who it's –"

"Coming for?" Arthur interrupted sarcastically. "Great. What's the plan if it's your brother? You won't be there?"

No trace of humor in his goofy servant, as Merlin glanced uneasily toward the door. "Gaius has help. A couple of the servants he trusts to keep their mouths shut, armed with buckets upon buckets of water."

To throw on the smoke, or on the dreaming boy? Arthur wondered. "And if it comes for you?" Merlin's eyes darkened, and he shivered involuntarily. And Arthur found himself adding, "You can fight it off, you did it last night easily, didn't you?"

"Easily," Merlin said, and his voice rasped slightly, as if mouth and throat had suddenly gone dry. "Not… exactly."

Arthur remembered the slender frame, swaying slightly as if at a great gust of wind, unfelt by anyone else. Tensing without apparent provocation so completely and horribly – before exploding with a light so sudden and unnatural he wasn't sure he had expected Merlin to remain in one piece. Uneasily, he shrugged that memory off.

"You'll be staying here," Arthur declared. His personal manservant should have occupied the antechamber anyway, but since Merlin preferred to be close to Gaius at night – and he wasn't that far from Arthur, and usually not even that late, in the mornings – Arthur hadn't said anything. But tonight… "I'll even sit up with you until midnight. Just to be sure."

"I don't like the idea of that curse anywhere near you," Merlin objected – and just as suddenly changed his mind, as something seemed to occur to him. "If I do, you've got to promise me something."

"Princes don't make promises to their servants," Arthur said lazily, covering the twinge of uncertainty Merlin's earnest manner gave him.

Merlin scoffed. "Princes make promises to protect their subjects all the time, it's got to be in the knights' code somewhere."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "You want me to promise to protect you from the scary black smoke? I'll just flap my apron at it, shall I?"

"No, I don't need your protection," Merlin said – rather too dismissively, in Arthur's opinion. "I mean, you've got to promise to protect yourself from me. If it looks like the curse is starting to take hold –"

He hefted the naked blade in his hands in a gesture for Arthur to take it.

Arthur didn't.

"Don't be ridiculous, Merlin, I'm not going to –" _Kill you_ , he couldn't say. Nor, _run you through_. Not even in jest. "Use this on you."

As his head bowed and his shoulders slumped, Merlin's fingers closed about the sword, tightly enough to make Arthur worry he'd cut himself; he reached immediately to remove the weapon from the younger man's hands.

"Arthur, you… cannot. Let me… use my magic. Against you." Merlin's eyes met his, imploring. "Please. I would rather be dead than have a curse turn me against you."

And by all the gods, he meant it. Arthur couldn't look away from his gaze, couldn't even speak. He would never be afraid of Merlin again.

"Let's just hope it doesn't come to that," he finally managed.

It seemed that was good enough for Merlin, and they did not speak of the matter again. Not through Merlin bringing Arthur's dinner – and then sharing it – not through the last of the chores Arthur could think of to occupy the time, within the room at least. Not through Merlin's obligatory complaints and the conclusion of the last activity.

And when they sat in silence – drinking together for the first time, a watered wine that would settle nerves without impairing judgment – they spoke neither of the time nor of the sword that lay bare on Arthur's table.

They spoke of magic, then.

Because it had occurred to Arthur to ask, did Merlin's abilities extend beyond curse-resisting. Merlin was hesitant, almost shy – who would have thought – but Arthur had experienced only inimical magic, had heard only of its evils. To hear the opposing argument from someone he knew, and trusted, was quite like Merlin himself – an annoying draft that turned out to be a breath of fresh air.

Merlin didn't speak of things he'd done since coming to Camelot, and Arthur didn't ask. The law was the law, after all. But the magic he described using in his hometown was as alien to Arthur's experience as the peasant life itself – and therefore fascinating.

At least, while they had nothing to do but wait for midnight and a visible curse.

And when it came, Arthur was unprepared.

The flame hadn't quite reached the candle-mark; he at least was keeping an eye on it, probably Merlin as well, who commented lightly, "At least if it comes here, we'll know it hasn't gone for Mordred."

He hadn't so much as finished saying his brother's name, when a violent gust of wind blew suddenly down the chimney in Arthur's chamber, and the fireplace belched a startling cloud of soot.

Arthur had been sitting with his back to it, and knocked the chair over in rising to face the unexpected sound and movement. Merlin was on his feet as well, from Arthur's second chair, pushed back from the foot of the table - and for the briefest of moments, Arthur was ready to scoff at his own nervous fright, ready to counter whatever uncomplimentary remark Merlin made, ready to order the cleaning of the hearth and floor.

The smoky cloud didn't settle, but acted on its own, rising and drawing together and floating on thin air, rolling and tumbling like a very slow wave – but like a wave, undeniable and inescapable.

Arthur retreated, arms instinctively spread to shield his manservant – and it seemed to pursue him. The idea entered his mind, _we should run_ – and then Merlin slipped under his right arm to face the dark cloud, swallowing and regurgitating itself, his own arms out and fingers spread.

"Merlin," Arthur warned, anxious at the proximity of his friend to the darkness that had proved so dangerously debilitating the previous night. Reaching to grab him – by the lapel of his jacket, his sleeve, his neckerchief – and somehow couldn't lay a hand on him.

"It'll keep coming," Merlin returned, glancing over his shoulder. His voice sounded tight and desperate. "Unless it's refused."

At that moment another gust whipped the sooty drift straight into him.

Behind him, Arthur couldn't see clearly what happened, but the darkness condensed into Merlin's outline – and the muscles of the younger man's body drew perceptibly tauter. A shudder rippled through him, fluttering the edges of his jacket and hair; he drew to his full height – then kept going, til his chin tipped up and his spine arced backwards. He made a noise of protest, more of a whimper than he'd admit to, under normal circumstances, and Arthur felt odd when he thought about the possibility of teasing him…

Because it was _different_ than what he'd witnessed, last night. Last night had been Merlin initiating contact, reaching and grabbing and staying – it seemed to Arthur – in control. This was…

A _mbush_ , was the word that came to mind.

"Merlin!" Arthur said again, hating the ignorance and helplessness he always felt when facing magic. He found himself fumbling sideways to the table for his sword – and confidence was slightly restored at the familiar weight and balance, the curve of the hilt in his hand.

His servant relaxed forward again – a movement gentle and mild and slow compared to the explosion of light that had occurred the night before – til he was slumped in on himself. Then he shuffled around, turning by degrees as if embarrassed or contrite, to face Arthur, his chin on his chest to hide his face.

Arthur didn't quite dare say his name again. As familiar as he'd become with Merlin's unique way of moving with ungainly grace – he didn't recognize him, now.

His hands were clenched in fists at his sides, but as his right jerked upward by degrees – like a puppet in the hands of a clumsy child, fighting gravity's inclination to pull downward again – his head came up also, just enough for Arthur to see his eyes.

Glowing gold. Like a sorcerer's or a witch's eyes were said to.

"Are you fighting?" Arthur said softly, uncertainly. Urgently. "Are you winning?"

Merlin's hand reached shoulder-height, and his fingers uncurled – but not entirely. They twitched into claws – and Arthur couldn't breathe.

He gagged. He choked – tried to cough, didn't have the air – fumbled at his throat. There was no physical impediment; the ties of his shirt were loosened halfway down his breastbone at this late hour.

Merlin's head tipped a degree, and his face – golden eyes blazing blankly – twisted in silent anguished plea.

 _You cannot let me use my magic again you._

He was going to kill him. Another moment and Arthur would pass out – another moment and he'd be dead. And if the blackness left Merlin then, he would realize what he'd done, and it would _ruin_ him and then there would be nothing left of either Arthur or Merlin…

Arthur concentrated on one particular spot on his friend's chest, a little upward and just to the right of the heart – prayed for some benevolent power to guide his shaky hand – his vision faded around the edges. Merlin took a step closer, and Arthur's was simultaneous, bringing the sword up.

It happened so horribly fast. The feel of his blade sliding through flesh so different than the rasp of straw figures on the training field. So sickeningly smooth.

Merlin's body jerked straight again for a moment – Arthur gasped in a free breath in time to catch him, let go the sword to carry him down to the floor. The gold cleared, leaving Merlin's eyes deep blue once again… he focused on Arthur's face… and smiled…

Arthur was not Gaius, he couldn't tell what damage he'd done. On his knees he scrambled for the basket of laundry waiting Merlin's attention on the morrow, snatching indiscriminately, returning to hold the material over the spreading red stain on the front of Merlin's shirt.

"Hold on," he choked out. "Just hold –"

The door of Arthur's chamber burst open. From his knees, he looked over his shoulder to see Morgana, hair disheveled around her shoulders, filmy white night-jacket loose and flowing about a more opaque gown.

"Arthur, I just had the most unthinkable nightmare!" she gasped, green eyes wide and dark in bone-pale face.

She couldn't see Merlin on the floor, from where she stood leaning against the closed door, and Arthur couldn't do more than gape.

Morgana added, "I dreamed that you ran Merlin through with your sword!"

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

 _(Morgana)_

She shot straight up in bed, gasping and grasping at the fabric of her nightdress as if to staunch blood-flow.

As if the sword had pierced her own body.

The darkness wasn't absolute; Gwen always left a single candle burning the night through, but all Morgana could see was her dream. Merlin's eyes blazing with gold magic as he clenched Arthur's throat without touching him. Arthur stepping forward to thrust his bared blade through Merlin's chest.

Merlin had magic. And Arthur had found out… and they'd fought?

Morgana threw her covers back and snatched at her robe, panic lending her movements rapidity but not dexterity. Her dreams rarely made sense, but they were always _true_.

And if either Arthur or Merlin succeeded in killing the other, things would never be the same. She had to stop them, no matter what logic dictated about dreams and reality.

Wrenching her door back, she flew down the stairs, around a corner, through a corridor. Two guards she passed stood still as statues – were they frozen, or was she invisible? Torches kept burning for watchmen extinguished behind her as if the darkness pursued her. _Hurry – hurry!_

The guard posted at the end of the hall didn't notice her either, as she yanked the heavy oaken door of Arthur's chambers open and darted inside to lean on it and catch her breath. Thinking, for the first time – _Arthur's asleep, Merlin's snoring safely in his own bed in Gaius' back-room..._ Except, the room was well-lit, and the prince nowhere near his bed. The top of Arthur's head was visible past the table, as he sat or knelt on the rug before his hearth.

"Arthur!" she exclaimed, not sure whether to feel silly or terrified. "I just had the most unthinkable nightmare! I dreamed that –" she couldn't accuse Merlin of having magic or of trying to assassinate the crown prince, not even in a dream – "you ran Merlin through with your sword!"

As she spoke, he'd turned and risen on his knees – she realized there was more to his look of shock than reaction to her entrance or the content of her dream. They moved at the same time – he to return to whatever held his attention and she to circle the table to see what it was –

Merlin. Legs crumpled as if he'd collapsed where he stood, sprawled on his back, eyes directed vaguely toward the ceiling and blue. A wad of white material beneath Arthur's hands soaked up red liquid from Merlin's shirtfront at a startling rate; Arthur's sword tossed a little distance, had scattered tiny droplets on the stone floor, but more blood smeared the silver blade.

"Oh it was true!" she gasped, rushing forward to fall at her knees beside him.

"Hold this down, I'm going for help!" Arthur scrambled to his feet. The door banged, open or shut, and she heard muffled bellowing further off.

Heal! What else was magic for, but to save and restore?

She shifted the makeshift bandage to cover the wound with her own hand. As she pressed against the bleeding, Merlin's head rolled toward her – she looked and met his eyes and he gasped a great breath, as if he had not realized til just that moment what had happened to him. What was happening to him.

For one instant her palm tingled as if her skin was somehow soaking up his blood – _magic! healing!_ she thought –

And then her eyes went dark; she saw nothing but blackness.

But she heard whispers.

Fear. Her nightmares tenfold. For this time, it wasn't Arthur in danger, but she herself. Tied to a stake with dry kindling to guard her, plain white dress whipping in the wind. Uther declaiming – _sorceress_ – as Arthur dipped the torch to the wood.

 _You have magic, you know. Strong as Merlin's_ … snide echo of whispers. _He fights the inevitable. Everyone dies… you will die. Soon, and horribly._

No…

 _Unless you strike first. Kill Arthur –_

He's a good man –

 _His father's son._

Better than his father –

 _Better at what? Hunting, tracking, killing. You stand no chance against him. Unless you strike first. Uther is nothing without his precious son, he can be manipulated if you like, or done away with. If you like. Because they would do it to you._

They're my friends!

 _No one is friends with a sorceress._

They wouldn't -  
 _You really want to give them the chance? To find out? It'll be too late by then… Take your power now, and fear no man, ever again. Embrace this magic, and your dreams will show you what you want to see. You decide…_

I decide.

That sounded… good. No fear, ever again, sounded good.

 _Good._

Morgana inhaled, light invading her eyes as someone – Arthur – pulled her back from Merlin.

His eyes were still on her, dark with agony though he ignored the two guards positioning a pallet underneath him, keeping the wad of cloth – one of Arthur's shirts? – pressed against the wound, as if the pain he felt was other. Separate from his physical being. He was already ashen from blood loss, eyes surrounded by bruise-darkness; lips nearly colorless formed her name, slowly and breathlessly.

"Morgana…"

She struggled with Arthur's strength and hold, but whether to break it or to cooperate in gaining her feet, she wasn't sure. When Arthur let go, she was upright and frozen in place; he moved to the side of the pallet as the guards lifted it, holding the bandage down on Merlin's blood-soaked chest.

"We'll take him to Gaius," Arthur said over his shoulder to her. "He'll be all right. He will. Go on back to bed…"

Merlin's eyes kept contact with hers, and she didn't look away to acknowledge the prince. He whispered, as if there were no sounds or movements of hurry or tension, and she heard him clearly. "There is always another way…"

She stood still and watched them go, fast-careful as fighting men can, who carry a wounded comrade and have done it before. Merlin, who had magic, and Arthur who'd stabbed him for it – but was now carrying him to Gaius to save him…

Bewildered, Morgana looked around the room, serene and opulent, fire crackling at the hearth. On the side table, armor and sword and crown.

This should all be mine. If this was all mine, I would never fear anyone inflicting such a wound.

She looked at her hand, smeared wet with blood, and rubbed her fingers together, testing the cooling stickiness against her skin curiously.

 _Mine… sounds good._

As if in a dream, Morgana walked back to her own room, her own bed… and went back to sleep.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

 _(Gwen)_

She was late. Just a little late, but it still bothered her because she wasn't usually, usually she was early enough to bring the breakfast tray upstairs and either rekindle the fire or open the window, whichever was appropriate for the season, though midsummer meant opening the window obviously which was faster and sometimes quieter, before Morgana woke.

Unless she had one of her nightmares, of course, but those were rare, thank goodness.

But Gwen was still late, which was why she was hurrying, and with her attention on the tray so as not to spill anything, rather than on the familiar route, she almost did spill, coming around a corner just as someone else came the opposite way.

"Oh my goodness!" she gasped as dishes rattled and liquid slopped – but she kept her hold and her balance. With the aid of that person's hand on her wrist, maybe. "Thank you – I'm sorry!"

"You're all right?"

Then, she almost dropped the unspilled tray, from shock, looking up into the handsomest pair of blue eyes since Merlin's. "Oh – Prince Arthur! I beg your pardon, I was in a rush…"

"Me as well. It was quite a night." He gave her a wry, tired smile, but didn't shift his weight or look past her as if impatient to be on his way.

"What happened?"

Sometimes she wished she used the maid's room adjacent to Morgana's quarters, just to be closer on mornings when she was late – though she wasn't usually late – but Morgana never wanted one of her nightmares to wake Gwen also, no matter what Gwen said about companionship and warm milk. And there was her father in the lower town to take care of, too.

The prince cocked his head as if debating whether to tell her – or maybe how much to tell her. "Merlin had a – an accident, in my room, last night. Morgana was there, it was a bit traumatic."

"An accident?" Not uncommon, Merlin's clumsiness was a well-known fact among the other servants, he was always in such a hurry, but he was so sweet and cheerful about it that no one minded. But for Prince Arthur to mention it – for something about it to have _him_ in a rush – "He's badly hurt?" she concluded worriedly.

"Oh! It was – I mean, there was some bleeding, but… Gaius is a very skilled healer." His mouth quirked and she wondered why – then she wondered why she was looking at and thinking of his _mouth_ , and blinked her eyes back to his. "And Merlin heals quickly."

"Yes, I've noticed." She felt her cheeks warm, remembering her friend so close to death that Gaius had taken it for granted, and the next moment talking and teasing. _That_ kiss had been a mistake, she hoped her next one would be –

"So he'll be fine." Arthur swung his arms a bit and rocked on his heels self-consciously. "This morning he wants out of bed and Gaius is threatening sleeping potions to keep him resting until we're sure he's all right and – by the way, he's worried about how Morgana might have taken it all, so maybe you could… keep an eye on her?"

"Of course." Gwen couldn't help the smile of pleasure that she could be of use to the crown prince; usually he overlooked her in his aggravation with Morgana.

"Right. Thank you." He gestured again, past her. "I'm just on my way to the kitchen to make sure Merlin has – that Gaius has the right sort of… breakfast. For a patient."

She ducked her head in a nod that was also a bow. "And I am… late to take this to Morgana."

He moved from her path, and she continued.

"Sorry to have kept you."

Gwen looked over her shoulder to see that he'd gone several steps before turning also, and that lopsided smile that all the ladies sighed over, was on his face. For her.

"Not at all," she managed. And wasted another three seconds watching him turn and stride out of sight, whistling and swinging himself around the corner with one hand on the wall. Merlin really would be fine, then, she decided, if Arthur could whistle. Morgana would be glad to hear that, and maybe later Gwen could visit – _Morgana! oh!_

Gwen _hustled_.

But as it turned out, she needn't have bothered. Morgana was still asleep in the middle of her silken pillows and sheets.

Perhaps the excitement had tired her out, Gwen sympathized, leaving the tray on the table and going for the curtains to let in some light. The rustle of the fabric almost covered the same sort of noise, from the direction of the bed.

"Good morning, Morgana," Gwen called softly over her shoulder, shaking the curtain so it would fall correctly when she hooked it back out of the way.

"Don't open those." Morgana sounded fully awake, now.

"But it'll stay dark in here," Gwen said reasonably, not pausing in the task. "Do your eyes hurt? Maybe when we go to Gaius –"

"I'll light the candles," Morgana said – and a moment later Gwen caught a light-and-shadow flicker on the stone wall.

She let the curtain fall back into place, obscuring the sunshine and turned to see Morgana on her feet next to the bed, stretching in catlike self-satisfaction – across the room from the candle-holders. Well, her mistress must be feeling active or restless this morning. Perhaps because –

"Why would we need to go to Gaius," Morgana added in the sort of condescending drawl she usually reserved for the prince. "My eyes are fine."

Gwen drew closer as Morgana dropped into her seat and began picking over the breakfast tray, without a word of appreciation – not that she needed to say anything, but she did usually…

"I thought we could check up on Merlin," she said, making the comment into a question.

Morgana tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.

Gwen prompted, "His accident?"

"Oh!... yes, _accident_." Morgana smirked. "He's all right then, I assume. _Magically_."

"Please don't joke about that," Gwen said with quiet distress. Morgana was acting strangely – and not at all like she sometimes did after a sleepless night. "Arthur said that Gaius treated Merlin and –"

"Arthur said." Morgana's hand stilled halfway from tray to mouth; her green eyes looked almost black as she stared into the empty space of the room. "Tell me, do you think Arthur will enforce Uther's laws on magic, when he is king?"

The topic made Gwen nervous – it had ever since that mysterious poultice had appeared to heal her father. As if simply by talking about it they might draw Uther's unreasonable attention and questions would be asked again and arrests would be made and she _still_ didn't know who'd actually healed her father but she didn't want that person caught, so… best to be on the safe side.

"I'm sure he will," she blurted. "Of course he will uphold Camelot's laws, now and always."

Morgana hummed thoughtfully, then shoved the tray away. "I'm going to get dressed," she announced, and went on to detail the chores she had for Gwen that day.

And it would be a busy day – hard to manage a visit to Gaius' chambers, but maybe if she was quick about it… maybe Arthur would be visiting, provoking Merlin into recovering more quickly…

"Yes, my lady," she said, focused on the first of her list of duties.

Morgana had paused by the window. "It's a beautiful kingdom, isn't it? Pity it's ruled by a man." Gwen chuckled, following to help with buttons and ties, as her mistress continued musingly, "Perhaps someday Camelot will have a queen. Queen… sounds good."

"When Arthur marries," Gwen suggested.

Morgana turned just enough to let the exaggerated roll of her eyes show, before she disappeared behind her dressing screen. " _Who_ would marry _him_?"

Gwen, still smiling, decided that Morgana was fine, and she would tell Arthur so when she saw him again.

 **A/N: Oneshot, remember. So I won't be continuing this idea – you can think that Morgana began that day, trying to kill Arthur and everything worked out as it did in the series… Or you can think that the legends were closer to correct and it was the Arwencelot triangle that weakened Camelot and led to the civil war that took Arthur's life… Or you can figure that Merlin is more powerful than Morgana and suspecting whose destiny it now was to kill Arthur was the key to keeping him safe from her until he was a** _ **very**_ **old man…**

 **Good news is, I've crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line – 50k yay! (The story itself still needs a couple more chapters and probably an epilogue, too, but I'm easing off the pace of writing a bit…) The other good news is, I'm hoping to have a new chapter for "Released by Truth" out by the weekend!**


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